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BACCALAUREATE  SERMONS 


BACCALAUREATE 
SERMONS 


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PRESIDENT   M.   WOOLSEY  STRYKER 

TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASSES  OF 

HAMILTON  COLLEGE,  1893-1905 


flJtica,  I5et»  got* 

WILLIAM  T.  SMITH  &  CO. 
1305 


Copyrighted  1905 
by  M.  Woolsey  Stryker 


CONTENTS 

Page 

I.  SEEING  THE  UNSEEN,  9 

II.  THE  INDISSOLUBLE  LIFE,  23 

III.  RADICAL  AND  CONSERVATIVE,  35 

IV.  THE  REVELATIONS  OF  RESERVE,  49 

V.  THE  ABUNDANT  LIFE,  61 

VI.  OPTIMISM  AND  PESSIMISM,  68 

VII.  THE  STATION  OF  OBEDIENCE,  81 

VIII.  THE  BETTER  WAY,  91 

IX.  SPECIALISM  AND  SYMPATHY,  99 

X.  SYMMETRY,  111 

XI.  PROBLEMS  OF  CHURCH  AND  COLLEGE,  119 
C  XII.  THE  GLORIFICATION  OF  SERVICE,  129 

XIII.  DEMOCRACY  AND  CHRISTIANITY,  136 


722618 


SEEING  THE  UNSEEN 

TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS,  JUNE  18,  1893 

He  endured  as  seeing  Him  who  is  invisible. 

Hebrews,  11:27. 

The  Letter  to  the  Hebrews  was  both  an  argument  and  an 
appeal.  With  its  array  of  fact  and  its  august  consolations, 
there  blended  an  unfaltering  and  personal  trust  in  God. 
That  confidence  in  and  commitment  to  Him  is  of  the  very 
essence  of  true  religion.  Religion  is  either  the  fulfilment  of 
a  real  relationship,  or  it  is  a  fond  dream.  The  spirit  of  con- 
stancy is  so  sustained  and  illuminative  thro  this  whole  writ- 
ing as  to  make  it,  concerning  faith,  the  classical  source  both 
of  definition  and  instance. 

Not  in  any  special  phase  or  exercise,  but  absolute  and 
generic,  faith  is  affirmed  as  the  basis  of  life  and  the  warrant 
of  all  rational  hope.  The  book  deals  with  the  apparent 
vicissitudes  of  an  ever-moving  process,  and  at  the  same  time 
with  the  consistency  and  constancy  of  Him  who  guides  this, 
—  mutability  and  the  Immutable.  By  broad  retrospect  it 
would  prepare  men  to  recognize  and  meet  ungrievingly  the 
disciplines  of  change.  At  the  eleventh  chapter  the  argument 
proper  culminates  with  the  resonant  citation  of  preeminent 
believers.  Certain  of  the  venerable  roll  are  named,  souls  of 
altitude,  and  classes  are  summoned,  of  those  who  having 
won  their  rest,  make  up  the  celestial  part  of  that  holy  alli- 
ance and  comradeship  in  which  all  souls  are  one  who  love 
and  seek  the  will  of  God. 

"  Compassed  about  with  so  great  a  cloud  of  witnesses  "  - — 
they  who  were  once  the  spectacle  and  who  now  are  the  spec- 
tators —  we  have  the  tremendous  appeal  increased.  The 
clenching  thought  is  that  these  veterans  are  to  have  their 
work  perfected  in  those  things  provided  for  later  days  and 
riper  faith. 

9 


Fascinating  and  rewarding  as  the  whole  analysis  and  var- 
ious aspect  of  this  great  epistle  must  be  found,  let  us  press 
in  toward  that  core-idea  which  rules  it  all. 

What  was  that  "  wherein  the  elders  had  witness  borne  to 
them"?  What  is  the  theorem  upon  which  this  chapter 
moves?  At  the  outset,  it  is  given, —  a  definition  which  in- 
spires our  whole  instinct  of  flight,  and  lifts  our  eyes  past  the 
hills,  beyond  the  path  of  the  eagles,  up  the  ways  of  the 
angels !  "  Now  faith  —  (and  there  the  writer  leaves  the 
ground  and  takes  the  wings  of  the  morning)  —  "  faith  is  the 
proving  of  things  not  seen "  —  the  "  assurance  of  things 
hoped  for."  Faith  is  itself  a  proof,  a  conviction.  This 
eleventh  chapter  is  that  proposition  amplified  by  instance. 
It  begins  at  the  beginning  (as  Genesis  and  John  begin)  with 
"  the  word  of  God."  We  know  "  that  what  is  seen  hath 
not  been  made  out  of  things  which  do  appear,"  that  is, 
"  that  which  we  look  upon  did  not  come  from  phenomena.9' 
Spirit  and  life  are  behind  objects.  First-cause  precedes 
second  causes.  Word  is  back  of  world.  The  seen  is  the 
result  of  the  unseen.  The  Creation  is  that  over  and  thro 
which  the  Creator  lives  and  moves,  and  the  creature  who 
knows  this  and  so  lives  joins  the  triumphs  of  those  great 
Hebrew  men. 

It  is  upon  the  thought  that  our  text  condenses,  that  this 
roster  of  great  and  effectual  men  proceeds.  At  the  point 
where  we  station  our  meditation  Moses  is  the  immediate  in- 
stance. Out  text  analyzes  his  life  and  sums  it.  Unmatched 
and  solitary  that  life  stands  above  all  the  lives  of  the  old 
Testament:  forty  years  in  Egypt,  forty  years  in  Midian, 
forty  in  the  Wilderness,  —  "  endurance,"  all  the  way  from 
Nile  side  to  Pisgah  top! 

Such  enduring,  under  such  burdens,  borne  by  such  a  man, 
must  be  accounted  for!  It  must  have  "assurance"  and 
"  proof  "  under  it.  And  thus  the  writer  to  the  Hebrews  (and 
so  to  all  souls  perplexed  by  ages  of  transition  and  mental  dis- 
turbance) utters  this  epitome  of  all  that  Moses  was  and  did  — 
10 


strikes  the  chord  in  which  all  his  life  was  one  of  displace- 
ments. It  was  also  one  of  submissions  because  of  convictions. 
He  accepted  the  loneliness  of  leadership.  He  became  therein 
a  type,  at  once  of  the  sorrow  and  the  grandeur  of  a  prophetic 
soul.  He  did  not  fear  Egypt's  king;  for  face  to  face  he  knew 
the  "blessed  and  only  Potentate,  eternal,  immortal,  invisible," 
who  made  poor  both  the  riches  and  the  wrath  of  Pharoah. 

This  contrast  is  in  our  text,  but  the  very  Greek  states 
even  more  broadly  the  secret  of  faith  —  it  is  generic  not  per- 
sonal —  "  tov  yap  aoparov  <5>s  6Ps>v  " —  "  as  seeing  the  unseen,  '  — 
God,  and  all  else  secured  in  God  —  the  ruler,  and  the  whole 
realm  beyond  present  vision.  We  keep  both  the  euphony 
and  the  paradox  of  the  holy  page  when  we  say  that  faith  is 
the  sight  of  the  unseen.  That  then  for  our  theme.  Tran- 
scendental as  the  statement  is,  it  announces  the  real  wisdom 
and  the  real  life  of  the  soul.  All  uplifted  and  uplifting  souls 
have  endured  as  seeing  the  unseen.  Would  that  this  pene- 
trative beam  of  truth  might  scatter  the  vagueness  with 
which  we  think  of  Faith!  It  is  the  vision  of  the  invisible 
—  the  "  heavenly  vision."  This  "  conviction  of  things  not 
seen  "  is  a  test  and  organon.  What  the  eye  is  to  sense,  that 
confidence  in  God  is  to  the  soul!  Sense  is  not  the  last  of  us, 
we  are  hyper- physical  —  we  are  made  to  touch  the  impalpa- 
ble, to  hear  the  inaudible,  to  see  the  unsighted. 

It  is  this  idea  of  the  soul's  true  function  and  self -prophecy 
that  speaks  in  many  another  New  Testament  expression. 
This  very  word  dopara  marks  that  other  great  statement 
"  the  unseen  things  of  Him  are  seen  by  the  things  made." 
Nature  is  a  telescope ! 

Paul  speaks  of  Christ  as  "  The  image  of  the  unseen  God." 

"The  things  seen  are  for  a  while  and  the  things  unseen  are 
forever." 

If  we  "  have  the  eyes  of  our  hearts  enlightened  "  we  shall 
look  for  the  reality  that  underlies  all  that  is  but  apparent, 
and  find  that  — 

"  Earth  's  crammed  with  Heaven." 

11 


Faith  is  a  "  spirit  of  seeing,"  spiritual  second  sight.  It  is 
logical.  It  reasons  from  the  consistency  of  God.  The  child 
clutches  his  father's  hand  in  the  night  and  so  walks  homeward 
thro  the  dark,  and  "  we  go  by  faith,  not  by  what  we  see." 
It  is  faith  to  go  out  "  not  knowing  whither,"  because  we 
know  with  Whom. 

Faith  is  always  this  —  confidence  in  and  commitment  to  a 
person.  It  is  not  guessing,  arguing,  taking  chances, —  it  is 
trusting  someone  who  is  trustworthy.  Trust  is  more  than  a 
persuasion  from  visible  evidence,  it  is  self-proving.  It  is  not 
merely  one  emotion  or  attitude  out  of  many,  it  is  a  total  and 
vital  connection  with  what  lies  beyond  the  boundary  of  the 
five  senses  —  "the  masterlight  of  all  our  seeing";  —  the 
response  of  our  life  to  His  life  who  gave  us  ours  —  and  who 
made  outer  light  the  universal  parable  of  the  inner.  Soul  at 
last  can  be  satisfied  only  with  soul.  We  "  thirst  for  the 
living  God  ",  and  surrendering  to  the  compulsions  of  an  irre- 
sistible hope  we  find  suddenly  that  faith  guides  reason. 
Without  it  reason  is  not  a  safe  leader,  for  it  is  not  sane. 
Certainty  is  more  than  sight,  it  is  insight.  All  progress,  all 
skill,  comes  by  trusting  ourselves  to  that  next  step  which  is 
ever  just  beyond  present  knowledge.  It  is  not  as  a  mere 
optigraph  of  Heaven  that  these  scriptures  are  holy;  but 
because  they  prompt  that  trust  in  a  trustworthy  God, 
which  is  life  eternal  already  begun.  Nor  is  it  only  in  man's 
relation  to  God,  but  also  in  his  relation  to  every  other  per- 
son with  whom  he  has  to  do,  that  faith  is  indispensable.  In 
all  matters,  ocular  evidence  is  neither  final  nor  chief.  "  With- 
out faith  it  is  impossible  to  please "  anyone  !  The  soul 
itself,  and  its  impartiality,  count  in  all  convictions.  Every- 
where we  have  to  reckon  with  what  lies  below  the  horizon. 
In  all  things  good  faith  is  more  than  compulsion.  There  is  no 
sphere  of  thought  or  action  in  which  it  is  rational  to  "  dwell 
only  in  things  seen",  to  inspect  only  "  the  things  before  the 
face."  The  apostle  Peter  uses  the  very  word  "  myopy " 
when  he  speaks  of  those  who  are  spiritually  "  near-sighted," 

12 


Everywhere  the  unseen  presses  for  recognition.  Whether 
in  the  laboratory,  or  the  garden,  on  the  judge's  bench,  or 
upon  one's  knees  —  reverence  and  expectancy  toward  the 
"  things  not  seen  as  yet  "  are  indispensable  to  great  result. 

To  go  on  from  observation  to  classification,  from  conse- 
quences to  cause,  from  instance  to  rule, —  all  assortment  and 
all  synthesis, —  means  faith. 

The  quest  alike  of  the  eager  mind  and  of  the  longing  heart 
is  for  that  ultimate  unity  in  Whom  power  and  pity  meet. 
We  are  not  in  fear  of  too  much  learning,  but  of  too  little! 
The  legal  cannot  be  too  exact:  but  that  it  maybe  exact  it 
must  be  loyal.  We  are  carefully  to  look  down  that  at  last 
we  may  fervently  look  up  !     Love  is  the  way  of  prospect. 

We  are  already  in  what  we  call  "  the  other  world  ",  for 
God's  realms  are  one.  Only  now  we  are  withheld  from  the 
upper  light.  We  are  shut  within  the  shell  of  sense,  and, 
with  sense,  can  see  only  its  smooth  and  hard  limitations: 
but  we  have  equipments  for  which  those  walls  are  too  nar- 
row, tho  now  in  embryo  we  reckon  that  wings  mean  some- 
thing, and  with  an  act  which  stakes  itself  upon  the  conviction 
of  accessible  tho  as  yet  unperceived  realities  we  use  the  beak 
upon  the  fragile  and  temporary  wall  ! 

We  are  sure  that  the  vast  is  not  a  void,  that  derivative  life 
answers  creative  life,  that  longing  is  the  clue  whereby  to 
track  love  to  its  source,  that  conscience  is  a  '  right  line '  be- 
tween man  and  his  Maker,  that  "  the  spirit  of  man  is  the 
candle  of  the  Lord,"  that  these  things  of  sight  are  "  a  copy 
and  shadow  of  the  heavenly  things," —  and  so,  the  deep 
within  us  calling  to  and  answering  the  deep  above  us,  we 
make  God's  statutes  our  songs,  pitch  our  pilgrim  tents  to- 
ward the  apocalypse,  and  rejoice  in  Him  "  Whom  not  having 
seen  we  love." 

But  let  us  come  to  the  fact  that  the  perception  of  that 
which  is  out  of  sight  is  not  an  exceptional  but  a  normal 
function.  In  every  growing  and  advancing  life  men  "  hope 
for  that  which  they  see  not."     All  lofty  imagination  is  of  a 

13 


kind  with  faith.  Duty  uses  the  same  faculties  and  the  same 
methods  that  we  use  in  all  affairs,  only  the  purpose  is  lifted 
toward  God  and  the  scale  prolongs  into  eternity. 

The  life  of  the  spirit  simply  applies  to  the  Being  above, 
that  which  every  day  relations  apply  to  the  beings  about  us. 
Civilization  rests  upon  faith.  Society  is  Mosaic  with  that 
which  does,  dares,  and  endures,  "  seeing  the  unseen."  Faith, 
as  religious,  is  not  different  in  essence,  but  in  direction.  Men 
who  renounce  the  service  of  the  unseen  God,  serve  their  un- 
seen fellows  with  this  very  faculty.  Architecture  works  with 
the  same  problems  whether  one  builds  a  church  spire  or  a 
grain  elevator,  and  certainty  as  to  the  external  and  as  to  the 
eternal  world  is  in  either  case  a  reasoning  from  the  seen  to 
the  unseen.  There  is  no  working  theory,  in  physics  or 
psychics,  that  is  not  an  illustration  of  faith.  Assurance 
of  the  undiscovered,  all  induction,  all  foresight,  travels 
Moses'  way.  Tell  me,  what  other  brilliant  generalization 
from  particulars  ever  shot  such  light  on  man's  mental  or 
moral  path  as  the  thought  of  the  trustworthiness,  the 
fidelity,  of  the  Creator  —  that  the  universe  is  a  rational  and 
not  a  capricious  result? 

We  eat,  sleep,  trade,  by  faith.  You  wrap  money  or  love 
in  a  letter,  scratch  a  few  marks  on  it,  attach  a  stamp,  put  it 
into  the  box  at  the  nearest  corner,  and  wait,  with  a  thousand 
"  maybes  "  menacing,  for  your  answer  from  Iceland  or  Cal- 
cutta; all  because  you  believe  in  the  integrity  and  efficiency 
of  the  post  service.  And  is  it  credulity  to  believe  Him  "Whose 
eyes  outrun  the  morning  and  Who  maketh  spirits  His  mes- 
sengers?" You  cable  a  friend  across  the  sea  and  get  his 
reply  by  a  strand  3000  miles  long;  will  you  cavil  at  His  word 
"  running  very  swiftly  "  Who  said,  "  Before  they  call  I  will 
answer  and  while  they  are  yet  speaking  I  will  hear!  " 

Albany,  and  "51,"  the  fastest  and  promptest  train  in  the 
world,  is  twelve  minutes  late  by  the  board.  Men  walk  watch 
in  hand,  for  they  are  assured  of  the  Empire  State  Express. 

14 


Ten  minutes  —  eleven  —  and  over  the  Hudson  a  film  of  smoke 
wavers  up,  while  as  we  watch,  far  this  side  the  train  curves 
into  sight  and  swings  out  over  the  bridge.  All  is  haste. 
Clang  go  the  testing  hammers  along  the  wheels.  Clank, 
clank,  answer  the  journal-boxes.  Couplers  and  air-tubes 
snap  to  their  places,  and  we  are  behind  "  893."  Tom  Der- 
moid y,  white-haired  but  keen  of  eye,  is  in  the  saddle  there, 
eight  feet  over  the  ties.  He  has  given  the  cups  their  fill  of 
velvet  oil,  and  alert  and  ready  the  creature  waits,  with 
strange,  deep-drawn  sighs,  the  touch  of  the  hand  that  will 
hold  it  to  its  work.  "  'Board  I  "  and  at  the  word  the  throttle 
feels  the  touch,  the  mass  of  mechanism  answers  the  mind 
that  commands  it,  and  we  are  off.  Six  feet  six,  twenty  feet 
at  every  turn,  the  huge  drivers  respond  to  the  steam.  Up 
the  steep  grade,  the  wheels  biting  the  sanded  track,  swift 
and  more  swiftly,  past  avenue  and  factory,  and  the  pusher 
is  outsped.  Away  now  into  the  West.  Along  the  glistening 
lines  of  Bessemer,  down  hill  we  go  —  56,  55,  54  seconds  to 
the  mile.  Five  times  each  second  does  that  piston  make  and 
recover  its  24-inch  stroke  —  a  hundred  tons  of  steel,  with  a 
heart  of  flame,  hurling  itself  toward  the  sunset!  The  sandy 
plains  swing  backward,  the  Mohawk  unwinds  its  silvery  rib- 
bon, the  hills  stand  aside,  and  by  orchard  and  quarry,  thro 
town  and  valley,  in,  out,  swinging,  sliding,  leaping  —  it  is 
ever  on!  What  a  race!  Curving  as  the  river  curves,  the 
train  seems  to  cling  convulsively  to  the  rails  over  which  it 
rushes.  Can  that  slender  flange  hold  this  awful  centrifugal 
force?  How  possible  seems  one  mad  plunge,  with  not  a  soul 
left  this  side  of  eternity  to  tell  what  it  was  like!  And,  now 
we  think  of  it,  is  the  engineer  competent,  cool,  sober?  Has 
he  good  eyes?  Are  all  the  switches  true?  The  semaphores 
twitch  to  the  horizontal:  but  that  is  for  those  who  follow  us. 
How  is  it  ahead!  No  pause.  Our  steed  drinks  upon  the 
gallop.  Rocking  with  the  storm  of  motion,  Tom  Dermody 
peers  into  the  distance  and  draws  the  bar  a  little  wider.  On ! 
Here  trailed  the  Iroquois.     Here  Herkimer  struggled  toward 

15 


Fort  Stanwix.  Here  went  Kirkland  thro  the  wilderness  and 
the  winter.  Could  they  rise  up  to  look,  what  would  they 
conceive  this  thing  to  be  —  this  blazing,  screaming  terror  — 
this  tornado  of  iron?  Behold  adjustment,  contrivance,  fuel, 
fire,  force  —  nay  more,  it  is  an  epitome  of  this  strenuous  and 
Earth-subduing  age  —  it  is  the  transit  of  the  Saxon !  Now 
Deer  field  hills  throw  back  the  long  shriek,  sharper  than  any 
savage  cry  of  their  wild  days,  and  the  complaining  wheels 
smother  their  riot  pace  under  the  touch  of  the  same  power 
that  compelled  them  to  it.  Slower,  tho  rebelling,  slower,  and 
then  —  still.  "Utica!"  Ninety-five  miles  in  90  minutes! 
On  time! 

And  you  submit  yourself  to  that  pace  and  peril,  with  its 
multiplied  chances  of  stupid  switchmen,  flaws  in  spike  or 
axle,  imperfect  inspection,  a  thousand  risks  to  the  mile, 
trusting  thus  your  life  and  other  lives  more  precious  to  you, 
because  you  have  confidence  in  the  management  of  the  New 
York  Central.  You  will,  I  say,  give  yourself  to  all  this 
mechanism  which  you  do  not  understand,  and  to  the  man- 
agement with  which  you  are  unacquainted,  and  yet  insist 
that  only  *  seeing  is  believing ' !  What  credulous  incred- 
ulity is  that  which  refuses  to  the  Creator's  control  of  His 
own  world  that  which  it  bestows  upon  the  officials  of  a 
railway ! 

But  turn  to  the  market.  What  is  credit,  national  or  inter- 
national, but  trust  in  that  "  which  no  man  hath  seen  or  can 
see"?  Certifications,  vouchers,  endorsements,  bonds,  —  are 
these  *  sight'?  What  is  '  security  '  but  personality?  What 
were  our  banks,  our  whole  system  of  exchange,  the  United 
States  Treasury  itself,  without  confidence  in  common  con- 
science ? 

I  say  faith  is  the  world's  clearing  house.  Financial  infi- 
delity breeds  palsy.  What  is  panic  but  doubt  scaring  itself 
into  worse  doubt?  When  but  a  percentage  of  unbelief  dif- 
fuses thro  the  world  of  trade,  haggard  calamity  peers  in  at  a 
thousand  doors.     What  if  all  faith  were  destroyed!     That 

16 


were  such  a  catastrophe  as  if  the  world  were  suddenly 
arrested  in  its  turning  and  all  things  upon  it  snapped  into 
bottomless  chaos. 

When  relief  comes  after  a  stringent  or  a  barren  market  it 
is  not  because  there  is  more  money,  but  because  there  is  less 
commercial  agnosticism!  And  here  remember  that  business 
credit  is  what  it  is  by  a  diffused  Christianity.  The  banks 
of  the  world  are  not  in  pagan  lands.  By  this  river  all  things 
flourish.  No  more  than  I  would  starve  while  holding  a  cer- 
tified cheque  upon  the  Chemical  Bank,  no  more  will  I  fail  to 
use  what  I  have  every  reason  to  think  bears  the  very  signa- 
ture of  God. 

It  is  by  faith,  social,  domestic,  financial,  scholarly,  scien- 
tific,—  as  well  as  religious, —  that  we  live.  Faithlessness  is 
barbarism.  It  is  also  treason,  for  how  can  one  be  a  patriot 
and  at  the  same  time  a  cynic? 

This  sixth  sense  is  good  sense  and  none  other.  Indigent 
indeed  is  he  who  has  it  not.  As  the  vestal  of  God,  Nature 
lights  our  way.  It  is  not  by  observing  the  lantern,  but  the 
way  it  lightens,  that  we  get  us  home.  He  who  cares  only 
for  objects,  and  not  for  the  subject  of  them  all,  consents  to 
mere  optical  illusion. 

But  I  speak  of  the  endurance  which  the  sight  of  the 
unseen  teaches  and  inspires.  It  is  this  that  measures  power 
for  daring  and  for  waiting.  The  size  of  your  faith  is  the 
size  of  your  manhood.  The  believers  are  the  doers.  Faith 
is  no  idler's  possession.  It  is  a  high  exercise  of  power.  It 
bids  keenly  for  action.  It  is  an  energy  of  the  whole  nature. 
It  propels  and  compels.     It  leads,  and  is  heroic. 

That  Roman  was  a  stalwart  believer  in  his  city  who 
bought  up  the  land  on  which  the  Carthaginian  army  was 
camped  ! 

"  There  is  no  unbelief; 
Whoever  plants  a  seed  beneath  the  sod, 
And  waits  to  see  it  push  away  the  clod, 

He  trusts  in  God. 

17 


Whoever  says,  when  clouds  are  in  the  sky, 
1  Be  patient,  heart,  light  breaketh  by  and  by,' 

Trusts  the  Most  High.  • 

Whoever  lieth  on  his  couch  to  sleep, 
Content  to  lock  his  sense  in  slumber  deep, 
Knows  God  will  keep. 

Whoever  says  '  Tomorrow,'  '  The  unknown,' 
'  The  future,'  trusts  that  Power  alone 
He  dares  disown. 

The  heart  that  looks  on  when  the  eyelids  close, 
And  dares  to  live  when  life  has  only  woes, 
God's  comfort  knows. 

There  is  no  unbelief  ; 
And  day  by  day,  and  night,  unconsciously, 
The  heart  lives  by  that  faith  the  lips  deny  ; 

God  knoweth  why." 

It  was  this  sight  of  the  unseen  that  sent  Columbus  over 
the  sea,  that  kept  Washington  in  heart  as  he  manoeuvered 
his  footsore  regiments  across  the  Jerseys;  and  there  was 
never  a  discoverer,  a  commander,  a  liberator,  an  inventor,  an 
author,  who  was  not  strong  in  faith,  if  strong  at  all.  It  is 
this  presentative  faculty  that  has  led  to  all  the  realized  mar- 
vels of  physical  science.  The  heroism  alike  of  the  inventor, 
the  discoverer,  the  martyr,  is  faith  teaching  endurance.  To 
imagine  is  to  pursue. 

Leverrier  predicted  and  placed  Neptune,  with  its  orbit  of 
165  years,  because  he  believed  in  gravitation.  And  faith  is 
no  more  audacious,  is  just  as  exact,  as  scientific,  when  it 
trusts  His  consistent  goodness  Whom  all  events  obey  as 
firmly  as  the  battalions  of  the  stars  march  West. 

Science  is  Faith  plus  Investigation.  Religion  is  Faith  plus 
Service.  The  sciences,  of  sense  or  of  the  soul,  are  both  com- 
pelled to  use  the  same  implement.  "  The  believer  in  the 
unseen  atom  should  be  the  last  to  ridicule  belief  in  the 
unseen  God."  The  unseen  is  at  once  the  problem  and  the 
power  of  all  search. 

18 


You  are  more  than  all  of  your  senses.  It  is  soul  that 
quivers,  exults,  moans,  rejoices.  Your  senses  are  but  post- 
men handing  you  what  they  do  not  read, — -  electric  trans- 
mitters, if  you  please,  but  only  mechanical.  Back  of  these 
personal  being  sits,  listening  as  blind  Milton  listened  while 
his  daughters  pronounced  to  him  the  Greek  they  did  not 
comprehend.  Look  !  Yonder  is  Beethoven,  old  and  stone 
deaf.  He  weaves  passion,  pain  and  peace  into  strange, 
immortal  harmonies.  He  forges  music  into  light.  He  is 
rapt  as  a  Sibyl:  but  the  voice  of  the  oracle  is  all  within.  He 
can  not  hear  his  own  harpsichord  !  His  soul  plays  on,  and 
on,  shreds  of  the  symphonies  of  Heaven,  and  he  endured  as 
hearing  the  unheard  ! 

These  are  souls  that  open  their  windows  to  the  day.  They 
are  horizoned  by  beckoning  hands.  Strength  to  meet  and  to 
master  the  emergencies  of  life  can  only  come  from  the  guid- 
ance of  God,  and  this  can  only  come  by  that  choice  which 
makes  Him  the  first  in  our  hearts.  Decision  wonderfully 
clears  the  mind.  God  reveals  Himself  to  those  who  surrender 
to  His  guardianship.  We  but  shift  our  doubts  from  one 
hand  to  the  other  so  long  as  we  forget  that  in  everything  com- 
mitment seals  conviction.  Self-will  shuts  the  door  from  self- 
knowledge.  Sensualism  staggers  into  the  clutch  of  scoffing. 
Mighty  faith  comes  only  to  mighty  devotedness.  None  can 
teach  you  his  faith,  nor  give  it.  You  must  buy  for  yourselves 
and  pay  God's  price.  The  deepest  is  incommunicable  save 
from  above. 

"  How  can  he  give  his  neighbor  the  real  ground, 
His  own  conviction?" 

A  bystander  perceives  only  the  absurdity  of  a  telephone 
dialog,  because  his  ear  does  not  catch  the  responding  voice. 
Only  the  axis  of  a  telescope  or  a  tunnel  is  the  line  of  vision. 
When  Titus  took  Jerusalem  and  penetrated  to  the  Holy  of 
Holies  he  saw  nothing.  The  Shekinah  was  not  for  him.  We 
abide  in  the  truth  in  so  far  as  there  is  truth  in  us.  Belief 
and  life  are  something  more  than  showing  that  faith  toward 

19 


God  has  rational  analogies.  The  certainty  that  vanquishes 
objection's  not  argument,  but  commitment.  The  blessing 
of  Him  that  dwelt  in  the  burning  bush  awaits  all  who  will 
turn  aside  to  see.  Self -giving  is  the  price  of  all  high  com- 
panionships. Hastening  into  the  sweet  fulfilments  or  the 
terrible  surprises  of  the  unseen,  (one,  or  the  other,  they  shall 
be  to  us  each)  we  may  well  quit  all  else  for  that  which  alone 
has  "  the  powers  of  the  world  to  come."  This  is  dynamic. 
A  sense  of  the  security  of  righteousness,  of  the  stability  of 
God,  can  only  come  by  a  surrender  absolute  to  the  Father 
of  our  Spirits.  That  life  of  Moses,  stupendous  with  strug- 
gle, danger,  disappointment,  was  crowned  with  a  testimony 
which  was  also  autobiography, — "  The  Eternal  God  is  thy 
refuge  and  underneath  are  the  everlasting  arms."  The  shell 
will  shatter  at  last! 

"  Wings!  wings! 
To  touch  the  hem  of  the  veil  that  swings, 
As  moved  by  the  breath  of  God,  between 
The  world  of  sense  and  the  world  unseen ; 
To  swoon  where  the  mystic  folds  divide, 
And  wake,  a  child  on  the  other  side; 
To  wake  and  wonder  if  it  be  so, 
And  weep  for  joy  at  the  loss  of  wo; 
To  know  the  seeker  is  lost  and  found; 
To  find  Love's  being  but  not  his  bound; 
Oh  for  the  living  that  dying  brings ! 
Wings  !  wings  I 

Class  of  1893: 

You  will  not  ask  me  to  forget  that  you  are  the  first  to 
whom  it  is  my  duty  to  say  these  syllables  of  parting.  I  shall 
always  remember  it. 

I  have  longed  to  suggest  a  quickening  and  inspiring  thing 
to  you,  that  should  help  you,  under  God,  toward  mastery, 
first  of  yourselves  and  second  of  your  circumstances.  His 
presence  Who  loved  you  and  gave  Himself  for  you,  must 
broaden  and  deepen  my  incompetent  words. 
20 


It  is  my  last  occasion  with  you.  Other  feet  shall  tread  the 
ways  of  our  bright  hill- top, —  others  shall  answer  the  chapel 
call  :  but,  all  together,  I  can  never  pray  with  you  again,  nor 
talk  with  you  over  that  open  Bible.  It  is  the  last  time. 
Bear  then  with  one  more  loving  and  fervent  exhortation.  In 
the  name  of  our  good  College,  and  by  the  memory  of  those 
who  with  prayer  and  toil  dedicated  its  unseen  future  to  the 
God  of  Wisdom;  in  the  name  of  those  graduate  ranks  of 
staunch  and  reverent  men  that  now  are  to  receive  you;  in 
the  name  of  those  who  have  taught  you  here  with  genuine 
solicitude  for  your  noblest  training,  "  seeking  not  yours  but 
you,"  than  whom  you  may  find  more  plausible  friends,  but 
none  sincerer;  —  nay,  by  your  own  responsibility  to  your 
Saviour  and  your  Judge;  —  I  charge  you,  be  men  of  second 
sight !  While  the  visionaries  who  fix  their  affections  on  this 
unsubstantial  pageant  of  the  senses  chide  you  with  absent- 
mindedness,  look  you  with  the  vision  of  the  seer,  on  into 
the  world  of  ultimate  realities,  and  put  the  facts  of  the  soul 
before  the  fancies  of  the  senses. 

Educate  your  spirit's  vision  by  using  it.  Leave  both  the 
upstarts  who  make  little  of  life's  most  serious  and  unsilenc- 
able  questions,  and  the  dastards  who  avoid  them.  Let  God 
print  upon  the  inner  wall  of  your  very  eyelids  these  words  — 
"  as  seeing  the  unseen,"  and  when  sense  all  fails,  when 
you  curtain  your  eyes  in  that  swift  prayer  for  light  which 
each  of  you  must  sometime  pray,  when  ail  is  dark  but  duty, 
then  remember  the  kingdom  of  the  invisible, 

"  nor  bate  a  jot 
Of  heart  or  hope:  but  still  bear  up,  and  steer 
Right  onward." 

You  have  mistakes  but  also  bright  successes  behind  you: 
yet  neither  way  are  they  final.  You  may  offset  the  mistakes. 
You  must  surpass  the  successes.  To  answer  the  time  that 
with  a  bugle  call  challenges  constancy  of  soul  and  the 
heroisms  of  a  spiritual  philosophy,  you  must  hold  fast  Him 
who  today  is  so  near  to  you.     May  the  light  of  the  knowl- 

21 


edge  of  the  glory  of  God  shine  in  your  hearts  in  the  face  of 
Jesus  Christ!  He  is  your  soul's  Lord,  your  Master,  your 
Example,  your  Redeemer.  Seize  His  loving  hand!  He  will 
stand  by  you  in  the  furnace  of  temptation,  in  the  prison  of 
afflictions,  in  the  solitude  of  responsibility.  You  shall  come 
more  and  more  intimately  to  know  Him,  and  more  and 
more  deeply  as  the  rough  years  move,  shall  you  feel  that  His 
tender  promise  is  for  you,  "  Yet  a  little  while  and  ye 

SHALL  SEE  Me." 


22 


THE  INDISSOLUBLE  LIFE 

TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS,  JUNE  24,  1894 

"Not  after  the  law  of  a  carnal  commandment,  but  after  the  power  of  an  endless 
life."     Hebrews  7:16. 

It  is  necessary  to  see  what  these  words  mean  in  their  con- 
nection, and  from  that  force  to  go  toward  the  great  idea  into 
which  they  open,  and  which  the  local  application  illustrates. 

The  line  stands  in  a  paragraph  whose  purpose  it  is  to 
show  the  supreme  priesthood  of  Jesus  Christ,  that  He  is 
beyond  and  above  the  Levitical  succession,  that  He  is  after 
the  order  of  the  great  king-priest  to  whom  even  Abraham 
gave  tithes,  accepting  his  blessing  as  of  a  better  than  him- 
self;—  that  Christ's  priesthood,  single,  complete,  unchange- 
able, is  the  fulfilment  and  ideal  which  no  high-priest  of 
Israel  had  ever  attained  —  offering  one  final  sacrifice,  without 
infirmity  and  perfected  for  evermore. 

And  this  paragraph  (and  chapter),  which,  however  far 
away  it  may  seem  to  us,  came  close  to  the  daily  thinking  of 
the  Hebrews  who  first  read  it,  is  part  of  a  minute  and 
patient  and  at  last  triumphant  and  rapturous  argument,  to 
show  the  devout  Jews  who  in  those  apostolic  days  had 
accepted  the  true  Messiah,  that  all  they  had  loved  and  lived 
in  of  rubric  and  rite  was  not  now  despised  but  transcended ; 
—  that  they  were  not  to  be  troubled  because  the  venerable 
things  of  their  past  were  changed;  for  they  were  fulfiled,  not 
destroyed. 

In  the  Christ,  all  which  they  had  held  so  intimate  as  the 
vessel  and  vehicle  of  a  precious  covenant  and  a  common 
worship,  was  not  only  made  good,  but  made  better. 

The  whole  letter  to  these  believing  Israelites  bases  upon  the 
comparison  between  the  old  and  the  new.  Contrasts,  general 
and  special,  are  its  whole  structure.  It  is  ruled  by  antithesis, 
and  argues  a  fortiori. 

23 


Thus  our  text  is  an  expression  eminently  characteristic  of 
the  argument  into  which  it  enters.  Christ's  place  and  office 
is  not  carnal,  transient,  legal:  but  mighty,  quickening, 
enduring. 

Put  compactly,  here  is  a  summary  and  a  confronting  —  the 
Old  against  the  New.  Law  on  the  one  side,  life  on  the  other. 
The  life  does  not  deny  the  law,  it  surpasses  it,  taking  a  higher 
outlook  and  a  wider  reach.  Law  works  inward  from  without. 
Life  works  outward  from  within.  It  is  rim  versus  centre, — 
exterior  restraint  versus  interior  constraint. 

The  word  '  endless  '  is  much  more  exactly  rendered,  as  in 
the  margin,  by  the  word  indissoluble  —  a  life  essentially  and 
uninterruptedly  one  in  all  its  parts. 

The  old  dispensation  which  led  up  to  the  fullness  and  the 
fulfilment  is  set  forth  as  rudimentary  and  preliminary.  It  is 
pedagogical.  It  is  mechanical,  not  dynamic;  and  so,  a 
moment  later,  our  writer  says,  "  for  there  is  a  disannulling  of 
a  foregoing  commandment  because  of  its  weakness  and 
unprofitableness  (for  the  law  made  nothing  perfect),  and  a 
bringing  in  thereupon  of  a  better  hope,  thro  which  we  draw 
nigh  unto  God." 

I  urge  that  this  contrast  between  the  temporary  scope  of 
that  special  commandment  and  the  boundless  scope  of  that 
supreme  life,  bases  upon  and  illustrates  a  general  truth  of 
high  importance.  The  contrast  is  representative  of  the  per- 
manent conditions  that  divide  punctiliousness  from  power, 
the  narrowness  of  legality  from  the  abundance  of  life. 

In  all  the  things  which  we  are  saying  the  chief  point  is  this, 
that  there  is  all  the  difference  between  the  artificiality  of 
commandment  and  the  spontaneity  of  life,  that  there  is 
between  Aaron  and  Christ. 

The  law  of  all  commandment  is  the  law  of  criticism  and 
repression,  the  power  of  all  life  is  the  law  of  appreciation  and 
expansion. 

The  destructive  opposes  the  constructive  because  it  is  per 
se  inhibitive  and  cannot  be  creative.    All  precepts  are  good 

24 


only  as  they  lead  to  principles.  The  literal  rule  is  but  a 
means  to  the  end,  right  living. 

Law  measures  imperfection  —  life  alone  can  repair  and  re- 
place.    Law  may  introduce,  but  it  never  can  complete. 

The  Bible  is  not  only  a  history  but  it  also  gives  a  philoso- 
phy of  history,  and  it  shows  the  degrees  by  which  carnal  rule 
is  led  on  to  spiritual  power.  The  whole  climate  of  Hebrews 
is  changed  from  that  of  Leviticus.  This  was  God's  way  — 
always  is  His  way.  While  at  first  life  so  far  as  it  can  be  is 
stated  in  the  terms  of  law,  at  last  law  is  to  be  transfigured  in 
the  terms  of  life. 

Painters  and  sculptors  know  rules  and  work  with  them: 
but  what  knowledge  of  their  rules  alone  could  make  a  Ru- 
bens or  a  Thorwaldsen !  The  Idylls  of  the  King  are  grammar 
plus  Tennyson!  A  Lamia  is  prosody  plus  Keats!  The  Get- 
tysburg speech  was  history  plus  Lincoln! 

By  law  we  learn  to  avoid  death;  but  it  is  by  the  contact 
of  the  inspiration  of  a  superior  life  that  we  learn  to  live. 

And  these  two  dispensations,  of  law  and  of  life,  furnish 
forth  two  realms,  an  upper  and  a  lower,  in  one  of  which  we 
must  all  dwell.  The  upper  includes  the  lower  —  life  is  not 
extra  legal,  but  super  legal.  He  who  denies  or  despises  law 
has  not  learned  it,  and  must,  if  he  would  ever  go  up,  go 
down  again  to  the  first  principles  and  rudiments;  but  law 
cannot  say  the  last  word.  For  instance,  marriage  is  a  con- 
tract. That  is  a  sorry  marriage  which  forgets  its  contract, 
—  that  is  also  a  sorry  marriage  which  is  only  a  contract. 
Carnal  commandment  must  be  underneath,  but  it  must  be 
underneath,  —  the  "power  of  an  indissoluble  life." 

We  may  choose,  and  we  must,  whether  we  will  live  posi- 
tively or  negatively.  I  mean,  whether  we  shall  be  actively  or 
passively  good,  whether  we  shall  have  that  timid  and 
hand-to-mouth  behavior  which  is  mainly  concerned  not  to 
make  mistakes,  or  that  vital  eagerness  which  is  far  more  con- 
cerned to  avoid  making  nothing!  A  man  may  be  negatively 
good,  in  the  sense  that  he  does  no  mischief.     Such  an  one 

25 


idolizes  caution  until  it  becomes  impotence.  His  keeping  of 
law  is  as  if  one  for  fear  of  going  wrong  were  to  lash  himself 
to  the  sign-post  at  a  four-corners;  or  as  if  a  soldier  were  to 
save  his  powder  for  fear  his  gun  might  burst;  or  as  if  a  sick 
man  to  assure  himself  against  an  error  by  the  pharmacist 
were  to  swallow  the  prescription! 

Keeping  law  means  more  than  eluding  penalty.  He  is  still 
coarse  and  carnal  who  does  not  perceive  that  sin  and  the 
consent  thereto  is  the  thing  law  indicates  that  seeing  its 
naked  abominableness,  the  soul  may  cry  out  for  His  help 
Who  has  the  power  of  the  indissoluble  life,  in  Whom  "the  law 
of  the  spirit  of  life  makes  free  from  the  law  of  sin  and  death." 
The  differentiation  of  negative  from  positive  goodness  may 
be  noted  in  contrasting  the  altitudes  of  the  Siniatic  Law  and 
the  teaching  on  the  Mount,  desert  Arabia  with  fertile  Gali- 
lee. Here  we  get  right  at  the  idea  —  the  two  ways  of  one 
God:  but  this  introductory,  that  complete.  We  may  not 
refuse  either  way,  and  we  must  be  sure  that  the  primer  of 
a  particular  command  is  mastered  and  not  skipped.  Neither 
is  it  the  end.  It  is  much  to  avoid  concrete  evil,  and  so  the 
ten  words  go  on  —  "  Thou  shall  not "  —  it  is  goodness  by 
exclusion.  It  is  safe:  but  when  Christ  comes  to  translate 
precept  into  spirit,  He  gives  goodness  by  inclusion,  which  is 
strength.  He  blesses  the  humble,  suffering,  restrained,  eager 
for  right,  merciful,  pure,  pacific;  in  other  words,  He  chooses 
and  extols  the  life  that  begins  within.  In  summing  the  law 
of  Moses  into  two  commandments,  He  made  active  love  to 
God  and  man  the  whole  result.  Christ  states  actual  goodness 
anew  by  showing  how  ten  "  thou  shalt  nots "  equal  two 
"  thou  shalts."  Positive  goodness  is  less  verbal  and  more 
direct.  Life  advances  by  exchanging  negatives  for  affirm- 
atives. By  mastering  rules  we  grow  into  relations,  using  the 
go-cart  that  we  may  walk  without  it.  When  the  mechanical 
has  become  the  natural,  when  effort  has  become  spontaneity, 
when  the  crudeness  of  intention  has  become  the  second-na- 
ture of  intuition,  when  one  has  learned  to  absorb  the  principle 

26 


that  is  the  kernel  of  the  rule,  then  the  elocutionist  has  be- 
come the  orator,  the  disciple  the  apostle.  One  noble  con- 
formance is  worth  eight  or  ten  avoidances.  Much  '  search- 
ing of  scripture'  is  a  search  for  vetos;  over-pruning  and  not 
enough  mulching.  Doubtless  too  much  of  the  education  of 
children  says,  Don't,  don't  —  instead  of  Do,  do.  The  pri- 
mary lesson  so  long  as  needed  (but  no  longer)  must  be  to 
stop  from  error;  but  to  proceed  in  right  is  the  path  of  life. 
Preoccupation  is  protection  —  a  higher  interest  supplants  a 
lower.  When  a  child  can  be  made  to  laugh  it  already  has 
quit  crying.  The  way  for  a  man  to  leave  stinginess  is  to  be- 
gin generosity.  Presently  Scrooge  is  no  longer  himself!  It 
was  because  his  goodness  had  been  so  far  only  negative 
—  keeping  the  "  shalt  nots  "  —  that  the  young  man  to 
whom  Christ  opened  the  positive  and  eternal  life  went  away 
frowning!  Meaning  not  to  do  harm  is  much  less  than  de- 
termining to  do  good.  The  two  words  go  deeper  than  the 
ten,  and  so  at  first  seem  harder  to  keep:  but  when  drudgery 
has  been  overruled  by  vitality  they  prove  easier.  There  is 
all  the  difference  that  lies  between  a  balloon  and  a  bird,  in- 
flation and  wings. 

We  never  do  anything  right  well  until  we  do  it  uncon- 
sciously. To  be  over-aware  of  self  is  to  be  awkward,  or  at 
least  artificial.  The  senses  are  to  be  exercised  by  use  until 
they  cease  to  do  ill  by  learning  to  do  well.  One  must  think 
of  the  target,  not  of  the  arrow;  of  the  bird,  not  of  the  gun;  of 
the  listener,  not  of  the  song;  of  the  soul,  not  of  the  sermon. 
Negative  goodness  is  prim  and  timid,  too  self-concerned  to 
dare  aggression.  It  guards  its  rear  instead  of  advancing  its 
front.  It  adopts  the  tactics  of  McClellan  rather  than  of 
Sheridan!  And  still  the  philosophy  of  making  the  provisional 
seem  to  be  the  permanent  treats  symptoms  instead  of  deal- 
ing positively  and  radically  with  causes.  Tonic  is  better 
than  lancet.  Build  up  the  system  and  the  disturber  quits. 
Get  health  in  and  sickness  goes  out.  Health  does  not  recol- 
lect the  body.     It  is  when  life  loses  its  hold  and  power  that 

27 


the  patient  has  to  fall  back  upon  carnal  commandment.  A 
great  deal  of  our  religious  living  is  at  a  dying  rate,  or  at  least 
feeble  and  sickly,  because  it  forgets  that  the  way  to  fight 
asphyxia  is  not  by  vacuum  but  by  quantity  of  fresh  air. 
There  is  a  style  of  piety  that  is  mainly  pathological,  speak- 
ing with  the  accent  of  invalidism,  measuring  mournful  doses 
and  adjusting  hot-water  bags.  The  power  of  the  Living-One 
still  as  of  old  summons  chronic  debility  and  selfish  neuras- 
thenia out  of  itself,  "  Arise,  take  up  thy  bed,  walk  "! 

It  is  the  expulsive  and  propulsive  dynamic  of  what  is  posi- 
tive that  "  gives  power  to  the  feeble,  and  to  them  that  have 
no  might  increases  strength."  The  locomotive  gets  up  steam 
by  going  —  the  more  speed  the  more  draft.  To  warm  a  room 
one  must  close  the  window:  but  he  must  also  light  the  fire; 
for  to  raise  the  temperature  the  stove  is  far  more  necessary 
than  the  thermometer.  To  get  darkness  out  one  does  not 
use  a  broom  but  a  lamp.  Enter  truth,  exeunt  lies.  Enter 
liberty,  exit  bondage.  Power  is  in  the  ratio  of  displacement. 
"  Fire  makes  room  for  itself,"  say  the  Japanese.  While 
dupes  consent,  tyrants  rule  them,  —  not  longer.  The  Czar 
will  experience  Siberia  just  as  soon  as  freedom  shatters  rotten 
beaurocracy.  There  will  be  a  different  Russia  when  there 
are  different  Russians. 

America  will  have  better  cities  just  so  soon  as  it  has  better 
citizens.  There  will  be  a  morally  "Greater  New  York  "  when 
there  are  greater  New  Yorkers,  —  no  earlier.  Bad  men  can 
be  kept  out  only  by  putting  good  men  in.  That  spasmodic 
reform  which  stops  half-way  is  illustrated  in  Christ's  parable 
of  the  untenanted  house.  It  was  cleansed:  but  it  was  suf- 
fered to  stand  empty,  and  so  it  became  again  the  kennel  of 
demons. 

Not  doing  is  undoing.  To  rest  in  negations  of  wrong,  rather 
than  to  be  zealous  to  affirm  good,  makes  so  big  and  fatal  the 
bulk  of  sins  of  omission.  "  Ye  did  it  not  "  may  be  the  irre- 
vocable sentence !  He  who  is  either  so  irresolute  or  so  proud 
as  never  to  risk  a  mistake  will  never  do   anything.     The 


talent  wrapped  in  a  napkin  and  hid  in  a  hole  hurt  no  one : 
but  it  helped  no  one.  No  servant  will  enter  into  the  joy  of 
his  Lord  by  proving  that  he  never  did  much  ill. 

The  really  upright  life  must  be  downright,  —  willing  to 
blunder  on,  to  stumble  forward,  to  fall  up.  Real  virtue  is 
active,  overt.  It  does  and  moves.  It  is  measured  by  its 
momentum.  A  good  citizen  is  not  merely  one  who^keeps 
out  of  the  criminal  court.  It  is  of  course  something  not  to 
go  to  state's  prison:  but  that  cannot  be  the  sum  of  patriot- 
ism. Certainly  I  hope  that  none  of  you  will  ever  be  hung: 
but  I  really  hope  more  for  you  than  that!  A  Christian  is 
other  than  merely  one  who  does  not  flagrantly  violate  the 
moral  law.  All  the  sanctions  of  respectability,  ad  infinitum 
or  ad  nauseam,  cannot  make  a  life  of  perpetuity.  Absti- 
nences from  evil  are  worth  while,  so  far:  but  it  is  not  the  ill 
we  let  go  but  the  good  we  hold  fast  that  sizes  us. 

The  whole  Jewish  system  established  at  once  the  value 
and  the  weakness  of  commandment.  It  was  indispensable  as 
an  introduction;  altogether  deficient  as  a  conclusion.  It  was 
the  preceptor  of  adolescence  —  a  "  tutor  until  the  time  ap- 
pointed." The  grandeur  of  Judaism  was  its  original  advance 
into  precept;  its  decadence  and  stultification  was  in  its  re- 
fusal to  see  how  law  was  intended  to  lead  on  to  and  into  life. 
Coming  to  worship  carnal  rule  it  at  last  rejected  the  vital 
and  perpetual  newness  of  its  great  Consummator.  It  learned 
the  letter  of  exclusiveness  and  refused  the  Spirit  of  inclusive- 
ness.  It  put  the  trellis  for  the  vine.  Thus  it  elevated  the 
scribe  above  the  prophet  and  dwindled  to  a  retrospect.  The 
Jews  of  our  Lord  s  time  had  become  high-protectionists  in 
religion,  and  to  exalt  privileges  denied  stewardship,  ignoring 
or  hating  all  non-Jews.  The  Son  of  Man  announcing  the 
ripeness  of  a  changed  order,  breaking  down  the  partitions  of 
severalty,  declaring  that  the  special  could  only  be  fulfilled  in 
the  universal,  arraying  the  positive  against  the  negative  life, 
endured  the  inevitable  contradiction  of  parchment  and  phy- 
lactery and  signed  the  charter  and  covenant  of  emancipation 

29 


from  these  with  the  sign  of  the  cross!  The  monastic  spirit 
repeated  the  mistake  of  moribund  Judaism,  and  in  turn  its 
carnal  and  perfunctory  system  went  down  before  the  power 
of  wholeness  of  life.  For  it  is  the  way  of  life  to  transcend 
circumstance  not  by  caution  but  by  character,  not  merely 
to  quote  a  maxim  and  do  a  task,  but  to  inspire  an  ideal  and 
incarnate  its  joy.  This  is  the  freedom  of  the  soul  which  per- 
ceives the  spiritual  goal  of  instances  and  rubric,  and  (never 
disdaining  their  concrete  value)  holds  them  always  as  non- 
finalities.  So  does  the  flood-tide  first  follow,  then  fill,  and 
then  with  its  broad  sway  cover,  the  little  indentations  of  its 
estuaries.  Then  the  boats  go  wide  and  free  that  at  low-ebb 
must  strictly  heed  the  channel. 

Ramadan,  or  Lent,  or  Sunday, —  think  how  these  are 
kept  merely  by  abstention,  instead  of  by  a  typical  and  sac- 
ramental substitution  of  works  of  love  and  mercy.  If  the 
Lord's  day  were  once  used  by  the  alleged  followers  of  Christ 
in  His  way,  in  helping  the  hungry  and  heartening  the  dis- 
tressed,—  even  if  sleek  congregations  upon  cushioned  seats 
sang  fewer  lyrics  in  good-natured  praise  of  the  cross, —  had 
less  entertainment  in  the  way  of  'sacred  rhetoric'  with  all 
the  week  for  anti-climax  —  that  were  to  keep  the  day  holy. 
Long  ago  Isaiah  described  the  fast  God  has  chosen. 

The  way  we  keep  the  fourth  commandment  is  a  speci- 
men of  our  conception  of  the  others  —  not  doing  this  and 
that.  It  irritates  our  self-complacency  to  be  told  that  clean 
linen  and  general  inertia  are  only  negative  virtues  and  that 
it  is  the  fulness  of  the  law  to  "do  good  on  the  Sabbath."  We 
are  semi-Jewish  yet  in  our  Christianity  !  It  is  vain  for  us 
to  hope  to  understand  Christ  by  mere  ceremony  and  rite. 
He  is  the  pattern  of  an  affirmative  and  constructive  life. 
The  old  priesthood  offered  something  else:  but  He  offered 
Himself.  That  offering  of  self  is  our  only  availing  answer 
to  His  call  Who  said  that  the  way  to  find  life  is  to  lose  it. 
He  does  not  now  preach  economy:  but  great  investment  !  It 
is  the  engineer's  business  to  burn  coal,  not  to  save  it  ! 
30 


This  whole  and  indissoluble  book  is  a  book  of  positive 
and  so  of  profound  theories  of  life.  It  offers  to  supplant 
the  vagueness  and  barrenness  of  mere  negations  by  invinci- 
ble realities.  It  gives  us  law  as  a  base  of  operations.  It 
teaches  us  to  answer  the  allegations  of  doubt  by  the  power 
of  Christ.  We  are  to  put  off  the  old  man  by  putting  on  the 
new,  to  cease  to  do  evil  by  learning  to  do  well.  Might  of 
spirit  does  not  come  by  carnal  measurements.  Doubt  dies 
by  deed.  It  is  answered  by  fidelities,  not  disputations.  It 
is  not  what  we  controvert,  but  what  we  demonstrate,  that 
tells.  No  party  and  no  person  is  long  tolerated  whose  only 
outfit  is  a  grievance.  Non  credo  makes  few  converts.  Trust 
alone  can  vanquish  distrust  and  "overcome  evil  with  good." 
The  distinction  of  all  conquering  greatness  is  its  displacement 
of  shabby  apologizing  by  daring  aggressions.  It  is  in  this 
direction  that  Phillips  Brooks  so  wisely  noted,  "how  many 
more  resolutions  to  do  right  are  kept  than  resolutions  not 
to  do  wrong."  Better  be  strenuous  for  one  truth  than 
against  ten  lies  !  In  chess  or  in  war  defensive  tactics  may 
postpone  defeat,  but  only  offensive   tactics  win  the    game. 

When  in  Rio  harbor  our  Admiral  manned  the  guns  of  the 
Detroit  and  said,  /  will  act  —  he  defended  American  non- 
combatants  and  British  too,  and  all  Saxons  said  Amen! 
Do  your  duty  and  take  the  risks.  To  live  is  much  more 
than  merely  not  to  die  ! 

"  HERE    LIES  ONE  WHO    NEVER  DID  MUCH  HARM." 

Who  wants  that  for  his  epitaph  ?  But  if  mortuary  mar- 
ble were  less  diplomatic  how  often  this  negative  legend 
would  summarize  a  nominal  life  !  Webster  on  his  last 
couch  said,  "  I  still  live."  Someone  attempted  to  repeat  his 
word,  and  got  so  near  as  to  make  it,  "J  ain't  dead  yet." 
There  is  a  difference! 

Abandon  is  the  dynamic  before  which  prudentialities 
shrivel.     Personal  will   alone  can  rouse   the  wills  of  others. 

At  the  siege  of  Port  Hudson,  in  May  '63,  when  the  invest- 

31 


ment  had  been  made  complete  and  the  lines  were  almost 
within  talking  distance,  the  Rebels  had  at  one  point  erected 
a  powerful  redoubt,  crowned  with  rifled  cannon  and  crowded 
with  sharpshooters.  The  Federal  soldiers  dubbed  the  spot 
Fort  Infernal.  It  silenced  the  works  in  its  immediate  front 
and  made  the  trenches  deadly.  Its  vomit  of  iron  seemed  as 
if  set  with  a  hair-trigger.  On  the  evening  of  July  6th  Gen- 
eral Banks  sent  for  the  officers  commanding  the  opposed 
Union  front.  He  sharply  criticised  the  apparent  inaction  of 
the  assailants,  and  to  the  reply  of  Col.  Berrien  that  half  his 
guns  were  dismounted  and  the  redoubt  impregnable,  the 
General  gave  orders  that  at  nine  the  next  morning,  at  what- 
ever cost  of  life,  the  battery  should  be  stormed.  "  It  shall 
be  done,"  replied  the  Colonel,  his  bronzed  cheek  burning 
under  the  implied  rebuke  as  he  saluted  and  turned  away 
to  consult  with  his  subordinate  officers.  With  one  voice 
they  pronounced  the  attack  hopeless  and  declared  that  the 
men  would  not  obey  a  command  that  meant  the  annihila- 
tion of  their  columns.  Sternly  the  Colonel  answered  them 
all:  "Gentlemen,  the  attack  will  be  made  if  I  make  it 
alone!" 

At  half-past  eight  of  the  7th  of  July,  the  troops  mustered 
close  in  the  trenches  stood  gloomy  and  unresponsive  to  the 
words  of  their  commander,  as  with  a  few  words  to  each 
company  he  inspected  the  line.  Watch  in  hand  he  waited 
the  moment,  and  as  the  finger  marked  nine,  with  sword  in 
hand  he  leaped  to  the  parapet.  "  Forward  !  "  A  tremor 
fluttered  down  the  front:  but  they  remained  irresolute  — 
and  there  their  Colonel,  the  lead  hornets  swarming  about 
him.  "Forward!  Charge!"  Heads  went  down,  dark 
shame  flushed  the  faces,  yet  they  stayed.  "  Cover  your 
carcasses,  cowards — /  will  storm  the  battery!"  About 
face  and  alone!  Twelve  steps,  and  over  the  breastworks 
went  Color-sergeant  Whittaker,  and  there  were  two!  A  sword, 
a  flag,  and  the  cannon  gouging  the  earth  about  them  to  left, 
to  right,  the  sleet  of  death  pitiless !     Madmen,  shoulder    to 

32 


shoulder!  The  fire  slackened,  heads  peered  over  parapet 
and  bastion,  gazing  at  the  two.  Then  the  significance  of  it 
dawned  on  the  beholders,  and  alike  from  Unionists  and 
Rebels  there  went  up  a  wild  Saxon  cheer.  It  was  life!  Out 
of  the  trenches  and  over  the  earthworks  came  the  regiment, 
wild  with  the  passion  to  do  —  tho  doing  were  dying.  On 
and  over  and  in!  Steel  to  steel,  soul  to  soul, —  they  would 
have  stormed  Hell! 

No  one  remembered  how,  but  it  was  done,  and  as  the 
grimy  remnant  gathered  about  the  shredded  flag  struck  into 
the  parapet,  they  heard  the  faint  voice  of  their  wounded 
Colonel:  "  Well,  boys,  you  came,  after  all!  " 

Fort  Infernal  had  fallen,  and  with  it  Port  Hudson. 

Men  of  the  Class  of  '94 : 

You  stand  here  now  with  sealed  orders  as  to  where  you 
are  to  live  and  labor  :  but  the  whereby  and  whereunto,  this 
text  taken  to  heart  makes  an  open  secret.  "  Kai-a  Swafuv  £a^5 
aKaraXvTov  " —  Power,  Life,  Indivisibility  —  what  words  are 
these  to  heed  as  you  go!  Carrying  love  in  your  hearts  for 
the  fair  Mother  who  has  done  more  for  you  than  you  now 
can  guess,  may  you  vindicate  and  honor  her  by  your  positive 
deeds.  Acta  non  verba  1  In  the  ever-growing  library  of 
memory  cherish  these  four  volumes,  today  nearing  the  last 
paragraph,  and  of  which  the  whole  sum  is  this :  "  Quit  you 
like  men,  be  strong  in  the  Lord  and  in  the  power  of  His 
might."  "  If  your  virtues  do  not  go  forth  of  you,  't  were 
all  alike  as  if  you  had  them  not."  Submit  your  souls  to 
Him  Who  can  evoke  your  latent  capabilities  as  the  miracle 
of  irrigation  makes  the  Arizona  deserts  into  gardens. 

Let  fidelity  to  your  inmost  natures  add  your  lives  to  that 
phalanx  of  light  which  is  turning  the  battle  to  the  gates. 

The  sixteen  year  old  boy  who  against  a  field  of  expert 
men  won  recently  a  great  bicycle  race,  said  a  thing  worth 
remembering.  He  was  eagerly  questioned  as  to  how  he  did 
it.     "I  took  the  best  gait  that  I  thought  I  could  maintain 

33 


for  the  twenty  miles,  and  kept  it  up  just  the  same  from 
start  to  finish.  I  did  not  look  at  any  one,  but  just  held  my 
eyes  on  the  ground  ahead  of  my  wheel  and  kept  up  my 
gait."  There  were  famous  sprinters  competing  with  him, 
but  he  did  not  sprint.  They  were  watching  others  to  see 
what  they  were  doing,  but  he  watched  none  but  himself. 
That  is  the  moral  route  by  which  souls  reach  the  goal! 

God  free  you  from  sordid  seductions,  from  base  appetite, 
from  the  paltry  ambitions  of  the  many,  and  number  all  of 
you  with  the  glorious  few  who  refuse  the  sham  goodness  of 
conventionality  for  the  tasks  and  triumphs  of  the  more  ex- 
cellent way.  God  fulfill  for  you  every  desire  of  goodness 
and  every  work  of  faith  with  power.  May  your  souls  realize 
themselves  in  service,  "  Like  perfect  music  unto  perfect 
words," —  and  so  may  you  attain  the  crown  of  life! 


34 


RADICAL  AND  CONSERVATIVE 

TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS.  JUNE  23,  1895 

Every  scribe  who  hath  been  made  a  disciple  unto  the  kingdom  of  Heaven,  is  like 
unto  a  man  that  is  a  householder,  who  bringeth  forth  out  of  his  treasure 
things  new  and  old.     Matthew  13 :52. 

Right  upon  the  utterance  of  several  notable  parables, 
Christ  turned  to  His  disciples,  asking  them:  "Have  ye 
understood  ? "  And  at  once  to  that  close  question  He 
added  the  words  which  illustrate  how  much  He  meant  by 
really  understanding.  Therein  He  described  the  width  and 
abundance  of  His  own  instructions,  and  so  showed  what  in 
his  degree  every  true  teacher  must  be. 

He  would  have  all  disciples  learn  to  be  such  teachers, 
bringing  them  by  expectant  and  eager  attention  to  the  sweep 
and  search  of  His  word  and  work,  into  the  open  secret  of 
His  method  and  His  purpose.  He  teaches,  as  also  He  rules, 
by  the  way  both  of  continuity  and  of  increase.  To  Him, 
and  in  Him,  time  and  its  tenses  are  not  fragmentary,  and 
truth  is  a  unit  both  constant  and  augmenting. 

All  that  this  keeper  of  His  house  brings  forth,  (throws 
forth  —  swiftly,  determinedly) — out  of  His  abundant  the- 
saurus, or  treasury,  is  precious.  There  is  no  rubbish  there, 
no  moth-fret  nor  rust.  Thence  we  are  to  accept  and  adopt 
"  things  new  and  old."  What  we  now  affirm  and  urge  is 
the  equal  oldness  and  newness  of  the  teachings  of  Christ. 
He  certainly  made  good  this  declaration  in  both  argument 
and  accent. 

The  words  of  this  Instructor  of  time  were  as  emphatic 
and  sedate  as  Mt.  Horeb,  and  as  fresh  as  the  balsamed 
winds  that  blew  out  of  Gilead  to  ruffle  the  mirror  of  the 
Galilee;  as  old  as  the  light  and  as  new  as  the  morning. 

So  it  came  that  they  who  had  found  the  soul  and  substance 
of  elder  revelation,  welcomed  gladly  His  authentic  message, 

35 


and  that  unsophisticated  every-day  men  trusted  Him  as  an 
authoritative  interpreter  of  those  primary  problems  which 
lie  near  to  plain  hearts.  So  also  those  who  could  only  value 
quotation  marks,  who  had  no  insight  of  that  which  lay  back 
of  ceremonial  and  rubric,  who  idolized  idioms  and  had  lost 
the  idea,  failed  to  comprehend  this  Scribe  of  the  Spirit  and 
the  divine  truth-kingdom*  He  announced. 

Whoever,  then,  held  to  Christ  Himself,  and  pressed  past 
the  objections  of  unfaith  and  semi-faith,  found  Him  deeper 
than  the  oldest  words  of  men,  brighter  than  the  newest.  It 
is  the  same  now. 

The  whole  story  of  that  Wisdom  Incarnate  establishes  our 
text.  It  was  the  chord  in  which  His  entire  testimony  was  set. 

And  I  go  on  to  say  that  our  Lord's  illumination  of  "  things 
new  and  old  "  was  not  an  exception,  but  rather  a  specimen 
of  all  the  normal  and  constant  self-manifestation  of  God. 

The  material  of  truth  is  changeless,  its  form  is  never  twice 
alike.  Christ  here  asserts  the  variety  in  its  unity.  One 
treasury,  many  things.  Let  us  open  wide  our  minds.  This 
heavenly  and  kingly  Scribe  is  wiser  than  our  half- sight,  and 
quietly  rebukes  that  mental  attitude  which  looks  only  in  one 
direction,  whether  that  be  backward  or  forward.  For  he 
who  but  considers  the  East,  equally  with  him  who  but  con- 
siders the  West,  ignores  half  of  the  total  day. 

Christ  summons  us  to  live  under  a  whole  sky.  In  Him 
and  in  His  words,  and  in  those  who  best  know  and  most  re- 
semble Him,  the  past  and  the  present  are  held  not  in  opposi- 
tion but  in  sympathy. 

The  partial  is  the  easier  and  the  feebler.  The  sturdier 
and  more  genial  way  loves  to  discover  the  combination,  the 
union,  the  vital  identity  of  what  has  been  done  with  what  is 
doing  now.  For,  just  as  every  June  is  both  a  result  and  a 
cause,  the  child  of  an  elder  and  the  mother  of  a  junior  sum- 
mer, so  in  all  the  spirit's  life  the  past  and  the  present  are 
blended  in  Him  Who  has  "  neither  beginning  of  days  nor  end 
of  years." 

36 


Man  in  his  obstinate  fallibility  easily  lapses  into  one  or 
the  other  of  two  equally  incomplete  frames  of  mind  —  living 
on  the  one  hand  only  in  what  is  old,  and  on  the  other  hand 
only  in  what  is  new. 

Each  mistake  is  a  mistake  not  only  of  one-sidedness  but  of 
outsidedness  —  the  mistake  of  identifying  the  eternal  sub- 
stance with  its  transient  appearance,  of  preferring  accident 
above  essence,  fashion  above  fact. 

These  opposite  moods  are  of  course  largely  temperamental: 
but  it  is  the  business  of  a  rational  soul  to  overcome  predis- 
position and  bias,  and  to  get  rid  of  its  stiffneckedness  by 
realizing  that  man's  head  is  not  set  on  a  pedestal  but  on  a 
pivot ! 

Some  minds  are  eager  for  any  change,  and  some  are  angry 
at  any.  The  one  is  born  senile,  and  the  other  dies  puerile. 
Each  of  these  classes  has  its  own  dislike,  whether  muttered 
or  mumb,  to  the  under- thought,  the  wide  comprehension  of 
our  text.  One  secretly  wishes  that  Christ  had  spoken  only 
"  things  old,"  and  the  other  would  have  even  from  Him  only 
"  things  new."  One  frustrates  truth  of  its  eternal  summits 
of  ozone  and  outlook,  the  other  would  ignore  its  permanent 
foundation  and  base.  But  every  mountain  that  has  heights 
has  also  depths.     Altitude  measures  both  ways. 

The  man  who  loves  the  old  only  as  old,  and  the  man  who 
seeks  the  new  only  as  new  —  each  thinks  with  but  one  brain- 
lobe.  He  whose  discipline  is  unto  the  wide  kingdom  of 
Heaven,  loves  what  is  true  whether  it  seems  old  or  new,  — 
loves  it  because  it  is  always  both  old  and  new. 

There  are  two  words  which  in  current  and  somewhat 
careless  fashion  are  made  the  class-titles  of  these  alternative 
habits  of  mind, —  the  words  Radical  and  Conservative. 
Nothing  can  be  more  deplorable  than  to  fall  entirely  under 
either  category,  whichsoever  it  be;  for  either,  by  itself,  is 
segmental. 

Conservative  means  preservative.  Under  this  title  range 
all  those  who  dread  and  repel  change,   who  are  angered  by 

37 


the  unexpected  and  tormented  by  agitation.  The  Conser- 
vative hoards  decisions  and  loves  only  what  is  gradual  and 
guaranteed.  Custom  and  continuity  are  his  comfort,  and  he 
is  apt  to  look  with  a  stony  face  upon  the  unconventional. 
An  ounce  of  caution  is  worth  to  him  a  ton  of  daring.  Sud- 
den and  precipitous  men,  who  would  crowd  all  tenses  into 
the  present,  who  delight  in  speed  and  scorn  the  steam-guage 
and  the  escape- valve,  who  (  as  Lowell  said)  "  must  see  the 
world  saved  before  night,"  are  his  abhorrence,  and  these  in 
turn  renounce  the  Conservative  as  impossible,  coagulated, 
obsolescent  ! 

But  whether  the  Conservative  is  a  dullard  and  dotard  or 
a  seer  and  safeguard,  rests  upon  his  particular  scope  and 
motive.  For  to  test  one  time  by  all  times,  to  resist  swift- 
ness in  the  interest  of  strength,  to  weigh  secure  axioms 
against  rash  importunities  —  this  is  wisdom,  and  he  who  has 
it  saves  the  future,  postponing  the  unripe  today  that  he  may 
secure  the  bountiful  tomorrow.  The  true  Conservative 
declines  both  green  apples  and  rotten.  The  false  Conserva- 
tive, if  he  marches  at  all,  marches  backward.  He  is  crabbed 
and  hard-shelled.  He  is  an  antiquary  and  medievalist.  He 
adores  inertia  and  is  an  incorrigible  temporizer.  "  His 
strength  is  to  sit  still."  His  forte  is  negation.  He  worships 
in  a  pantheon  of  mummies.  To  him  the  present  is  but  a 
pile  of  exhausted  slag,  and  history  is  not  a  nursery  but  a 
graveyard.  He  likes  his  manna  pickled.  Experience  is 
sacred  to  him  as  a  means  wherewith  to  rebuke  hope.  He 
can  only  accept  the  prophecies  that  were  long  ago  fulfilled 
and  the  miracles  that  are  memories.  The  best  days  are 
past.  He  believes  only  memoriter,  and  maxims  are  his 
finality. 

The  Radical  is  the  man  who  would  go  to  the  root.  The 
tops  of  things  do  not  satisfy  him.  His  watchword  is  Thoro. 
He  is  assertive,  aggressive,  intense,  sweeping.  He  nails  a 
besom  at  his  mast-head.  He  does  not  add  precedents,  and 
he  forswears  formulas.     He  prefers    any  innovation  rather 

38 


than  to  endure  mortmain.  Yeast  is  his  element.  He  rides 
bare-backed  revolution.  He  wields  the  iconoclast's  hammer, 
and  loves  axe  and  plow  and  the  rubbish-searching  flame. 

Routine  men,  who  adore  yellow  parchment  and  pale  rub- 
rications  and  chancery-tape  and  all  that  is  canonical,  resent 
the  Radical  as  an  intruder,  an  impracticable,  and  a  fanatic. 

But  whether  the  Radical  is  a  sheer  destroyer  or  a  sublime 
reformer  depends  upon  whether  he  too  is  farsighted  or  near- 
sighted, upon  whether  mere  destruction  or  reconstruction  is 
his  ultimate  goal.  There  is  a  crude  and  cruel  temper  whose 
whole  passion  it  is  not  to  extend  boundaries  but  to  trample 
them,  whose  essence  is  lawless  and  anarchic.  Upon  what- 
ever plane  of  theory  of  affairs,  he  who  thinks  hard  without 
thinking  far,  or  moves  fast  but  not  firmly,  is  a  danger  and 
may  become  a  disaster. 

No  classification  of  men  is  ever  exhaustively  accurate.  No 
man  falls  exactly  within  a  single  category.  But  the  instance 
of  the  partisan  who  disdains  experience,  who  renounces  the 
sequence  of  causes,  whose  prospect  scorns  retrospect,  who 
mistakes  a  fancy  for  a  revelation,  who  thinks  his  dividend 
can  decree  its  own  divisor,  who  falls  with  hysterical  rapture 
upon  the  neck  of  "  each  new-hatched,  unfledged  comrade," — 
he  will  occur  under  a  hundred  names.  He  has  his  use  as  a 
scourge  and  a  warning  —  the  false  Radical,  who  does  not  go 
to  the  root. 

Of  the  radicalism  of  wild  excess,  clashing  with  the  conser- 
vatism of  stupid  lethargy,  the  France  of  just  a  century  ago 
was  a  sufficient  instance, —  the  collision  of  two  collossal 
madnesses  ! 

This  then  remains;  that  either  type  of  opinion  and 
method,  prevailing  in  isolation,  emphasizes  one,  and  but  one, 
of  the  two  necessary  complementary  phases  of  a  full  human 
activity.  Man  is  to  look  fore  and  aft.  The  best  guns  are 
turreted  and  command  both  bow  and  stern.  One  can  wisely 
neglect  neither  the  synthesis  that  groups  time  into  unity  — 
"  broadening  down  from  precedent  to  precedent,"  —  nor  the 

39 


analysis  which  subjects  all  phases,  customs,  statutes,  consti- 
tutions, to  reinvestigation. 

The  wild  Radical  puts  out  his  torch  at  midnight;  the 
blind  Conservative  shakes  his  torch  in  the  face  of  the  noon: 
but  he  who  has  disclaimed  infallibility  goes,  at  whatever 
hour,  by  the  best  light  that  hour  offers.  There  they  sit,  in 
senates  or  on  thrones,  robed  in  the  livery  of  officialism  or 
brain-bound  with  hoops  of  gem- set  gold,  waiting,  or  mutter- 
ing "  nothing  can  be  done,"  the  "  everlasting  No,"  the  non 
possumus  of  imbecility.  History  puts  them  into  its  museums 
of  fossils.  George  III.  may  stand  for  a  specimen,  or  you 
may  take  the  impotent  indecision  of  James  Buchanan.  And 
there  too  they  rush,  frantic,  screaming  that  everything  must 
be  done  at  once!  —  your  Wilkes,  Dantons,  Garrisons. 

But  now  and  then  an  epoch  advances  which  combines 
both  moods.  It  becomes  crystalline  and  effective.  The 
scarce  and  ambidextrous  man  stands  up  to  say,  "  Something 
can  be  done  now,  if  not  everything,  and  what  can  be  done, 
shall  be."  With  this  man  comes  an  era.  In  him  the  old 
order  changes,  as  the  dried  leaves  fall  before  the  outpushing 
buds  while  their  tree  lives  and  expands.  Seeing  both  possi- 
ble harms,  reckoning  with  both  the  obstacles  and  the  helps, 
enduring  or  daring  but  never  shirking,  this  man  waits  with 
a  patience  that  is  not  delay,  and  works  with  a  sureness  that 
is  not  haste.  The  really  large  one  lays  the  axe  to  the  root, 
that  he  may  conserve  the  truths  blighted  under  the  rank 
shadow  of  a  lie;  and  he  also  holds  back  impetuosity,  "lest 
with  the  tares  it  pull  up  the  wheat  also." 

In  writing  upon  the  Long  Parliament,  Macaulay  has  a 
terse  and  balanced  paragraph  upon  this  matter,  and  he  con- 
cludes: "In  the  sentiments  of  both  classes  there  is  some- 
thing to  approve.  But,  of  both,  the  best  specimens  will  be 
found  not  far  from  the  common  frontier." 

Truly  it  is  not  in  the  frigid  zone  nor  the  torrid,  but  in  the 
temperate,  that  the  greatest  events  issue  and  endure.  But, 
that  being  said,  it  is  not  for  the  dawdlers  and  sybarites  to 

4a 


estimate  the  stern  resolve  of  an  Elijah  fronting  Jezebel,  of 
Elisabeth's  son  denouncing  Herodias,  of  Savonarola,  and 
Beza,  and  Knox,  and  Sam  Adams,  and  Phillips,  and  Sum- 
ner. Time-servers  cannot  realize  the  indelible  influences  of 
the  commonwealth  of  Cromwell,  nor  can  tuft-hunters  per- 
ceive that  he  was  England's  truest  king.  When  such  dep- 
uty-sheriffs of  Almighty  God  utter  their  summons  let  men 
heed.  "  So  shall  He  startle  many  nations."  "  Kings  shall 
shut  their  mouth  at  Him."  These  radicals  are  conservative 
too,  tho  in  a  way  no  small  calipers  can  measure.  But  in 
a  range  far  above  these  stand  the  calm,  comprehensive  souls, 
who  know  how  to  work  while  waiting  and  wait  while  work- 
ing, and  their  appealing  eyes  look  past  the  hour  and  the  event 
for  the  verdict  of  God.  Plato  and  Tacitus  and  the  name- 
less writer  of  the  book  of  Job  stand  there.  There  are  Angelo 
and  Kepler.  There,  silent,  tender,  time-abiding,  upon  a  ped- 
estal cut  from  the  core  of  things,  which  no  man  manufac- 
tured and  no  man  can  mar,  Lincoln  stands.  The  spherical 
man  is  he  who  beyond  the  symbol  seeks  the  essence,  and  who 
will  have  that,  cost  how  it  may,  and  will  at  any  cost  keep  it. 

Supreme  herein  is  He  upon  whose  lips  absolute  righteous- 
ness and  everlasting  peace  kissed  each  other,  and  to  Him  — 
whether  we  would  dare  or  endure,  pity  or  denounce,  cut 
down  or  build  up,  —  to  Him  we  turn  for  the  complete  ex- 
ample of  the  symmetrical  life,  the  life  in  which  all  the  traits 
of  nobility  are  coordinate  and  entire,  in  which  wisdom  is  not 
cold  nor  zeal  roiled.  Whosoever  would  follow  Him  must  be 
a  manifold  man,  Conservative  and  Radical  in  one. 

Under  the  domain  and  dominion  of  Christ,  the  old  and 
the  new,  instead  of  warring,  wed.  Judgment  replaces,  and 
enthusiasm  restores. 

The  two  terms  we  are  discussing  are  not  absolute,  but  rel- 
ative. That  is  only  a  so-called  conservatism,  not  really 
such,  which  mistakes  routine  associations  for  the  truth  itself, 
and  identifies  the  treasure  with  the  earthen  vessel,  preferring 
an  empty  ark  to  a  living  Messiah. 

41 


The  true  conserver  is  a  Radical  in  desiring  to  keep  the 
real  thing.  The  perennial  second  commandment  is  dearer 
to  him  than  any  transient  device.  Form  is  to  him  the  utility 
and  life  alone  is  holy.  He  would  preserve  what  is  older  than 
all  form  in  any  form  that  will  hold  it,  and  would  rather  have 
a  quart  of  truth  in  a  square  cup  than  a  pint  of  truth  in  a 
round  one.  Christ  was  such.  His  balance  was  far  super- 
human. He  whipped  the  traffickers  from  the  temple,  yet 
predicted  that  temple's  overthrow.  He  rebuked  petrified 
tradition  while  declaring,  "  I  came  not  to  destroy  but  to  ful- 
fill." To  the  Pharisees  He  seemed  a  rash  leveller,  to  the 
Herodians  a  futile  moralist.  His  very  disciples  often  wanted 
to  hasten  or  to  restrain  Him:  but  He  would  neither  hurry 
nor  delay. 

He  came  to  *  set  men  at  variance,'  to  *  kindle  a  fire,'  to 
'  send  a  sword,'  to  say,  "  every  plant  that  My  Father  hath 
not  planted  shall  be  rooted  up,"  "  he  that  is  not  for  us  is 
against  us  " :  but,  and  also,  He  considered  the  bruised  reed- 
pen,  and  the  smouldering  flax-wick,  the  little  ones,  the  lost 
sheep,  and  turning  pride  upside  down  He  put  in  the  beati- 
tudes a  premium  upon  what  the  world  despises,  and  He 
said,  "  he  that  is  not  against  us  is  on  our  part."  Evolution 
and  revolution  wrought  together.  Positive  yet  patient, 
daring  yet  cautious,  never  hedging  and  never  hasting,  He 
was  outwardly  all  that  men  did  not  expect  and  would  not 
comprehend,  and  inwardly  all  that  they  needed.  While  he 
never  snarled  nor  sneered,  He  never  mitigated  His  meaning 
nor  receded  from  his  program. 

He  affirmed  principles  and  left  them  to  work  out  their  ap- 
plications. He  was  too  slow  for  some  and  too  swift  for  others 
—  bi-partisanship  scouted  Him.  He  was  so  supreme  that  no 
one  measured  Him.  President  Hyde  well  says:  "The  aver- 
age good  man  is  equally  at  war  with  the  bad  man  who  is 
below  him  and  the  progressively  good  man  who  is  above 
him.  The  reformer  and  the  criminal  are  about  equally  ob- 
noxious to  the  man  of  average  goodness  and  intelligence. 

42 


The  prophets  and  the  betrayers  are  equally  odious  and  pro- 
miscuously stoned.  The  Saviour  is  crucified  between  two 
thieves.' ' 

Still  the  Church  is  but  semi-christian  in  its  emancipation 
from  what  is  seen  and  temporary.  It  still  but  begins  to 
know  its  mission  as  Christ's  ideal  of  society.  We  fail  to  see 
that  the  husk  is  precious  only  for  the  kernel's  sake,  and  that 
when  the  wheat  is  gone  what  is  left  is  but  straw  and  chaff. 
The  old  is  good  while  it  covers  the  new;  after  that  it  is  a 
dry  pod. 

John  the  Baptist  was  one  mighty  Radical  who  illustrated 
the  law  that  they  who  wield  sharp  tools  must  feel  them:  but 
that  axe  of  his  laid  to  the  upas-tree  of  hollow  words  was  the 
reconstructive  agent  the  time  was  most  in  need  of,  and  his 
lonely  voice  was  the  herald  of  Israel's  King. 

Every  great  preserver  is  called  a  deformer  till  he  is  gone. 
Men  are  prone  to  garnish  the  sepulchres  of  their  prophets 
with  epitaphs:  but  the  prophets  with  epithets.  The  many 
feel  more  secure  when  those  who  compel  them  to  think  are 
under  a  good-sized  slab! 

It  remains  for  us,  if  we  would  neither  tear  nor  raffle  this 
seamless  text,  to  hold  to  the  fluidity  of  God's  purpose  and 
providence,  and  to  see  the  sacredness  of  all  its  conduits, 
whether  present  or  past.  They  are  neither  identical  nor  in- 
dependent. Truth  is  perennial,  and  we  hold  what  we  have 
of  it  both  as  the  heirs  of  our  parents  and  as  the  trustees  of 
our  children. 

That  age  is  most  important  which  does  the  most  to  em- 
phasize what  is  of  permanent  importance.  The  wise  man 
perceives  both  what  is  permanent  and  what  is  progressive, 
neither  unduly  preponderating.  The  new  and  the  old  do 
not  impeach  one  another.  Origins,  means,  and  ends  —  all 
are  coordinate.  Revelation  is  a  process  by  which  what  is 
vital  and  seminal  constantly  adapts  and  enlarges  its  new  ex- 
pressions.    Finality  is  death,  and  prejudice  the  rigor  mortis. 

*  Providence  unfolds  the  Book.'     It  is  not  a  kaleidoscope 

43 


for  a  toy,  but  a  telescope  for  a  tool,  and  it  looks  deeper  than 
any  of  us  is  aware. 

Christ  planted  a  thousand  seeds  that  now  are  forests. 
Under  that  Argus-eyed,  Atlas-shouldered,  Briareus-handed 
Leader  both  the  intensive  and  the  extensive  life  find  scope. 
Under  that  calm  and  conquering  dominion  we  are  not  to  be 
terrified  at  ideas  that  surpass  and  supersede  our  inherited 
schemes.  One  could  not,  for  instance,  crowd  our  modern 
and  still  tentative  conception  of  missionary  duty  into  the 
ideals  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

Slavery,  feudalism,  the  serfdom  of  one  sex,  have  felt  the 
touch  of  Christ's  sceptre;  and  the  cowardice  of  wealth,  as 
the  envy  of  want — all  usages  without  reason,  are  yet  to  own 
His  ever-germinal  Kingdom. 

We  are  to  imitate  fidelity,  not  fashions.  As  our  forbears 
did,  so  must  we, —  tell  what  we  learn  of  God  in  our  own 
words!  We  must  mint  our  own  coin-current.  We  are  not 
invited  to  repeat  the  wile  of  the  Gibeonites,  and  provide 
ourselves  with  what  is  dry  and  mouldy!  Miracles  are  not 
repeated;  greater  ones  are  wrought.  He  who  accustoms 
himself  to  God's  Spirit  finds  the  old  renewed  in  larger  won- 
ders. God's  latency  is  all  in  all.  He  does  not  exhaust. 
Life  is  incessant  innovation.  It  is  only  when  one  stops  go- 
ing that  his  horizon  and  perspectives  no  longer  change. 
"  Tempora  non  animum  " —  "  They  change  their  skies  but 
not  their  souls  who  traverse  the  ocean."  New  seas  are 
sailed  under  new  stars.  It  is  not  the  familiar  scene  but  the 
intimate  companion  that  makes  life's  journey  serene.  If 
you  are  scholars  of  the  great  Teacher,  He  will  give  you  both 
review  lessons  and  advance,  and  outgrowing  your  garments 
you  will  find  that  your  apprehension  of  today  will  not  fit 
you  tomorrow,  certainly  not  the  day  after  tomorrow.  Lot's 
wife  for  a  parable ! 

We  are  put  into  a  day  that  forces  us  upon  God.  Much 
does  our  Lord's  word  apply  to  our  very  time.  It  is  a  strong 
detergent  to  "  every  disciple  unto  the  kingdom  of  Heaven." 

44 


The  giant  is  out  of  the  bottle!  The  era  of  analysis  is  not 
accidental,  it  is  providential.  Man  needed  it.  The  Church 
needed  it.  God  awakens  us  from  the  "  opiate  of  usage."  It 
is  a  revival.  The  ages  in  which  the  status  is  unchanged  are 
wintry  ages.  In  scholarship,  legislation,  society,  religion, 
the  motionless  times  are  the  moribund.  Life  must  either  be 
moribund  or  more  abundant! 

A  time  like  this  of  ours  is  deplored  by  those  who  dread 
any  change  and  adored  by  those  who  love  all  change:  but, 
if  sane,  we  will  neither  neglect  nor  abuse  its  disciplines.  We 
may  neither  surrender  to  every  challenge  nor  reject  every 
claim.  Truth  is  not  shaken  by  either  assault  or  doubt.  We 
can  do  nothing  against  it.  Magna  et  prevelabit  —  spite  of 
harsh  attack  or  feeble  defense. 

Just  as  to  a  man  walking  too  fast  upon  a  city's  crowded 
sidewalk,  every  other  man  is  too  slow,  and  to  a  man  walking 
too  slowly  every  other  man  is  too  fast,  so  the  pace  of  the 
world  is  a  limitation  which  we  can  somewhat  affect,  but  to 
which,  to  affect  it,  we  must  somewhat  conform.  We  are  to 
advance,  if  effectively,  neither  laggardly  nor  too  fast.  We 
are  to  have  new  things  and  old,  old  things  and  new.  The 
web  if  unfolded  will  show  that  every  true  age  has  pressed 
home  new  woof  upon  the  old  warp.  We  cannot  do  more  than 
to  utter  our  own  convictions,  and  we  may  not  dare  do  less, 
both  aggressive  and  circumspect,  neither  timid  nor  tumid. 

The  processes  of  readjustment  compel  the  processes  of 
restatement,  and  both  these  processes  come  often  with 
clamor  and  always  with  pain:  but  only  those  wring  their 
hands  whose  assurances  are  outside  of  God.  There  are 
half-men,  who  only  see  one  way,  and  there  are  ages  domi- 
nated by  such  men  that  are  only  half-ages :  but  whole  men 
and  whole  ages  look  both  ways,  and  sailing  by  North  Star  or 
Southern  Cross  are  piloted  by  Him  Who  sees  all  and  will 
show  all.  Holding  to  Him  the  genuine  soul  will  not  shiver 
nor  shrink. 

What  we  all  need  is  less  anxiety  over  precedent  and  more 

45 


confidence  in  God.  In  the  trust  that  history  is  prophecy, 
that  God  is  here,  that  He  still  steers  the  world,  the  deep 
seers  of  our  century  have  spoken.  "  In  Memoriam  "  voices 
it.  Whit  tier  is  the  bard  of  "  that  great  law  which  makes 
the  past  time  serve  today." 

"  Whate'r  of  good  the  old  time  had 

Is  living  still.       *       *       * 
God  works  in  all  things.     All  obey 
His  first  propulsions  from  the  night. 
Ho,  wake  and  watch!    The  world  is  grey 

With  morning  light." 

No,  "  this  is  not  our  rest,"  for  body  or  mind.  We  are  in 
transitu.  Our  souls  are  under  marching  orders  and  lodge  in 
tents. 

Then  what  this  word  of  Christ  should  fix  in  us  is,  that 
truth  is  eternally  young.  Revelation,  nature,  man,  provi- 
dence, yield  perpetual  increase.  The  encyclopedia  of  knowl- 
edge must  be  supplemented  with  annual  volumes. 

Pondering  the  inexhaustibleness  of  the  treasures  of  God 
hid  in  Christ,  richer,  deeper,  wider,  with  every  practical  test 
of  them,  a  truly  reverent  philosophy  of  the  world  as  His 
must  take  on  continually  grander  proportions,  and  must 
speak  with  ever- mightier  convictions  and  ever-better  argu- 
ments. 

No  true  science  remains  stationary.  Geology,  chemistry, 
astronomy,  biology,  even  history, —  what  changes  of  method 
and  result  have  these  undergone  in  three  generations!  But 
the  objects  have  not  changed,  nor  have  the  necessary  mathe- 
matics of  thought  wherewith  we  work. 

World  and  event  prove  Christ  the  Interpreter  of  time  and 
eternity.  The  more  He  does  the  more  He  both  confirms  and 
expands.  His  words  are  not  Dead  Seas,  but  wells  of  living 
water.  The  "  Heir  of  all  things,"  His  latest  words  are  His 
largest.  Who  shall  debar  His  illimitable  and  crescent  sway 
upon  Whom  all  converges  and  from  Whom  all  radiates,  the 
old  and  the  new  blending  in  His  integrity  ? 

46 


Men  of  the  Class  of  '95 : 

This  '  commencement '  is  an  ending;  but  far  more  is  it  a 
beginning.  Poetic  fitness,  as  well  as  convenience,  long  ago 
transferred  it  from  the  autumn  of  the  college  year  to  the 
summer.  Your  real  curriculum  is  not  behind  you,  but 
before. 

You  are  now  to  translate  and  parse  that  "  Sunt  quos 
curriculo  pulverem  Olympicum  Collegisse  juvat"  The 
Olympic  dust  is  yonder.  The  college  has  been  but  your 
introduction  to  the  '  collegisse."  You  are  whirling  up  to 
the  line,  and  are  all  but  ready  for  the  word.  Let  me  add  my 
voice  to  the  sending  cheer. 

When  you  come  panting  and  straining  to  the  finish  — 
"  the  goal  nicely-avoided  by  the  glowing  wheels,  and  the 
noble  palm  " —  the  voices  that  shout  "  Well  done!  "  will  not 
sound  here  !  In  that  eternal  commencement,  having  "fin- 
ished your  course  with  joy,"  may  it  be  true  of  you  each  and 
all,  in  a  far  deeper  sense  than  blithe  Horace  ever  considered, 
— "  evehit  ad  Deos  ! "  Bethink  yourselves  that  you  are 
charioteers — "a  Olarpov  to  the  universe  and  to  angels."  I 
am  sure  that  you  would  admonish  the  new-fledged  Sopho- 
mores here,  who  are  kindly  translating  my  little  Latin  to  the 
maidens  beside  them  —  ("  junctaeque  Nymphis  gratiae 
decentes " )  —  to  bestir  themselves  even  already  for  that 
third  summer  hence  when  they  too  shall  gather  taut  the 
reins  for  their  life  race. 

Good-bys  are  always  trite :  but  not  the  less  are  they  solemn. 
Already,  to  two  of  your  company  —  to  Frank  Burrowes, 
who  died  in  September,  '93,  and  to  John  R.  Myers,  jr.,  who 
died  in  July,  '94, —  you  have  said  the  irrevocable  farewell. 
Forty-six  men  began  the  work  of  your  class  four  years  ago; 
now  twenty-nine  complete  the  roll.  Never,  after  this  week, 
will  so  many  of  you  gather  under  one  roof  !  In  groups  you 
will  return  to  the  hillside  of  your  common  love:  but  little  by 
little  your  ranks  will  gather  closer,  until,  perhaps  in  1955, 
you    will   hold    your  last  class  meeting  —  of  one  !     He  will 

47 


come,  the  relic  of  you  all.  He  will  ride  up  the  hill  he  cari 
then  no  longer  climb.  He  will,  with  some  young  guide  not 
to  be  born  for  thirty  jyears  yet,  observe  the  stately  new 
buildings  and  people  the  old  with  you  and  your  comrades 
of  the  moss-grown  nineteenth  century.  Perhaps  he  will  say 
a  kindly  word  at  the  mound  where  one  shall  then  be  resting 
who  for  three  years,  under  whatever  college  vicissitudes, 
was  a  good  friend  of  '95.  He  will  look  out  upon  the  lovely 
slopes  and  beyond  the  curving  hills,  the  boys  will  gather  in 
their  caps  and  gowns  and  cheer, — 

Boom  Rah !  Boom  Rah  I  Who  is  he  ? 

Vive  La  1  Vive  La  I  XCV  I 
—  and  then  —  he  will  go  down  into  the  valley  ! 

But  between  this  and  that  day  work  lies  —  your  real 
standing  is  to  be  registered.  It  is  a  grand  time  to  live  ! 
Live  boldly  !  We  shall  watch  you  from  this  signal  station. 
You  will  be  welcomed  back,  with  your  honors  new  and  old. 
The  white  spire  and  its  far-flashing  point  will  guide  you 
from  afar.  The  bell  will  greet  you.  The  old  well  will  bub- 
ble for  you.  You  will  send  along  your  boys  for  the  nine- 
teen-twenties.  All  good  to  you  in  the  strenuous  years  upon 
which  you  enter  !  Be  Christ's  men  !  Accept  every  one  of 
you  His  name  and  His  guerdon  of  self-sacrifice;  and  grad- 
uate at  last,  "  having  obtained  the  good  degree,"  and  all  of 
you  with  high  honor  ! 


48 


THE  REVELATIONS  OF  RESERVE 

[TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS,  JUNE  21,  1896 

/  have  yet  many  things  to  say  unto  you;  but  ye  can  not  bear  them  now. 

—  John  12:16. 

This  was  said  in  that  upper  room  and  on  that  passion- 
night  when  more  tenderly  and  more  fully  than  ever  before 
our  Lord  opened  His  heart  to  the  eleven  who  loved  Him. 
He  sought  thus  to  prepare  them  for  the  experiences  so  new, 
so  near,  and  still  so  incomprehensible.  But  His  words  even 
then  were  not  so  much  an  explanation  as  an  embrace.  We 
are  always  furnished  best  for  our  next  steps  by  personal  love 
to  our  Leader,  rather  than  by  vision  of  the  way. 

Too  much  foreknowledge  would  baffle  and  daunt  us.  Each 
page  of  instruction  has  its  back  to  the  page  beyond.  God's 
books  are  printed  leaf  by  leaf  —  continuous  sense  and  con- 
stant surprise  await  each  turn.  Progress  and  reserve  go  to- 
gether. Revelation,  which  is  an  unended  and  an  endless  pro- 
cess, accommodates  itself  to  immaturity  by  its  hidings  of 
both  grace  and  power.  "  By  divers  portions  and  in  divers 
manners  "  God  prepared  the  way  by  the  prophets  and  "  in 
the  fulness  of  time  "  declared  His  Son.  He  developed  His 
meaning  as  rapidly  as  it  could  be  at  all  accepted.  And  when 
the  Christ  was  made  manifest,  even  to  those  nearest  Him, 
and  to  them  because  nearest,  "  He  spake  the  Word  as  they 
were  able  to  bear  it."  Revelation  were  wasted  were  there 
not  readiness  for  it.  Growth  is  the  only  method  of  God  that 
we  know,  and  His  omniscience  waits  upon  human  capacity 
so  that  curiosity  shall  neither  be  tantalized  or  drowned. 
Waiting  is  not  delay,  but  preparation.  The  withholding  is 
full  of  tender  promise.  Just  because  all  is  not  given  at  once 
we  are  sure  there  will  be  more.  What  we  can  bear  we  shall 
hear.  Each  testimony,  to  the  end,  is  to  be  shown  in  "  its 
own  times."     God's  motherliness  meets  our  spiritual  diges- 

49 


tion  with  food  convenient,  and  neither  offering  that  which  is 
unripe  nor  that  for  which  we  are  unready,  makes  distinction 
between  babe's  milk  and  man's  meat.  Eye  teeth  come 
earlier  ;  wisdom  teeth  later.  We  do  not  expect  a  "  Clark 
prize  "  exhibition  from  Freshmen  ;  but  four  years  from  now 
we  shall  expect  from  you  more  than  that.  Because  living  is 
learning,  you  will  all  outgrow  yourselves  many  times  before 
Earth's  school  is  over. 

The  guardian  must  await  the  competency  of  his  ward, 
and  the  heir  must  be  under  tutors  and  governors  while  his 
nonage  lasts.  That  possession  without  preparation  may  be 
a  mortal  damage  is  shown  by  the  many  wrecks  of  those  who 
come  into  a  great  estate  without  experience  of  values  and 
with  undisciplined  wills.  God  graduates  his  demands  to  our 
aptitudes,  and  that  we  may  not  be  overborne  He  puts 
primer  before  grammar,  and  syntax  before  prosody.  He 
guages  the  strain  to  match  the  muscle,  and  does  not  impose 
upon  adolescence  either  the  reflections  or  the  responsibilities 
of  full  manhood.  He  does  not  expect  the  child  to  speak  as 
a  man,  nor  the  man  to  think  as  a  child. 

Christ's  tuition  in  Galilee  was  a  signal  instance  of  divine 
discipline.  Nazareth  was  no  great  place;  but  there  the  boy 
Jesus  learned  obedience,  and  so  came  to  a  stature  of  soul  to 
endure  the  gaze  of  a  nation  and  the  apparent  ignominy  of  a 
Roman  cross!  There  He  learned  to  teach  men  as  they  were 
able  to  receive  and  to  temper  the  light  to  the  vision. 

Or  take  this  Book.  How  part  led  on  to  part!  How  its 
story  marches!  What  an  "  increasing  purpose  "  it  registers! 
How  the  relative  moves  toward  the  absolute!  By  provisional 
stages  and  by  steady  advances — from  Exodus  to  Nehemiah 
—  it  covers  eleven  hundred  years.  Then  the  "four  cen- 
turies of  silence,"  then  Bethlehem.  Again  from  the  Ascen- 
sion sixty  years  more  before  the  beloved  disciple  laid  down 
his  pen,  with  "  Many  other  things  did  Jesus  which  are  not 
written."  It  is  a  cumulative  record,  growing  as  now  in 
finest  lithography  the  print  takes   new  lines  and  tints  from 

50 


Successive  stones*  Each  century  added  its  own  impression. 
What  a  witness  is  this  Book  whose  study  has  formed  a 
strong  component  part  of  your  curriculum,  to  the  manner  as 
well  as  the  matter  of  providential  truth!  As  literature  it  is 
august,  but  as  an  evidence  of  God's  pedagogic  way  it  is 
sublime.  He  has  but  an  illiberal  education  who  has  not 
been  taught  in  these  Scriptures  the  fundamental  philosophy 
of  history.  The  evolution  of  redemption  is  the  highest  ap- 
peal to  the  patience  of  hope,  and  the  deepest  assurance  that 
"  of  the  increase  of  His  government  there  shall  be  no  end." 

What  a  surrender  it  is  to  fail  to  recognize  that  the  divine 
is  always  the  interhuman,  and  to  estimate  the  times  of  the 
Judges  by  the  times  of  the  Evangelists  —  to  speak  as  if 
Jacob  could  have  understood  Paul!  Each  age  was  an  ad- 
vance. Abraham  was  of  one  period,  Moses  of  another;  but 
Moses,  shepherd  tho  he  was,  could  not  have  written  the 
Twenty-third  Psalm.  David  could  not  have  penned  the 
fifty- third  chapter  of  Isaiah,  nor  the  "  Songs  of  Degrees." 
Jeremiah  could  not  have  anticipated  the  Annunciation. 
Unity  throout,  but  of  will,  not  wisdom.  These  holy  men 
spake  as  they  were  moved.  The  dates  are  not  on  the  writ- 
ings, but  in  them,  God  having  ever  provided  "  some  better 
things."  Even  Paul  saw  "  in  part."  He  did  not  dream  of 
the  modern  geography  and  of  modern  missions.  He  was  not 
shown  the  territorial  reach,  the  new  politics  of  all  these 
centuries,  just  as  we  now  do  not  guess  the  new  society  that 
Christ  has  in  mind,  nor  the  slow  and  stormy  times  thro 
which  it  shall  be  brought  in.  But  He  who  wove  the  facts 
here  set  down,  and  who  has  overcome  thus  far,  is  the  same 
forever  in  saying:  "  I  have  yet  many  things  to  say  unto  you, 
but  ye  cannot  bear  them  now." 

Level  to  the  topmost  comprehension  of  each  time,  meet- 
ing each  occasion,  always  opportune,  weaving  no  anti-climax, 
always  with  both  dramatic  unity  and  dramatic  movement, 
the  providential  truth  is  given,  link  by  link,  and  the  Word, 
mortising  each  stone  into   the  arch,  perfects   the  whole  by 

51 


that  which  every  part  supplieth.  The  symmetry  is  vital, 
not  mechanical.  With  the  divine  oversight  and  control 
there  is  no  variableness.  The  embryo  and  the  birth  alike 
are  His. 

Things  that  were  inscrutable  to  the  first  disciples  are 
taught  in  our  infant  classes.  Christ  trusted  them  with  ideas 
as  fast  as  He  could,  and  as  it  was,  they  were  in  constant 
amazement.  He  was  wont  to  say,  "  If  ye  can  hear  it,"  — 
"  He  that  hath  ears."  How  fast  events  moved  from  that 
Passover  to  the  Pentecost.  What  pregnant  suspense  and 
with  what  unimagined  issues! 

After  that  cloud-burst  of  grace  and  on  thro  that  genera- 
tion there  runs  a  steady  crescendo  of  spiritual  comprehen- 
sion, the  words  being  confirmed  in  signs  following.  Inspira- 
tion accommodates  itself  to  the  soul  as  incarnation  accom- 
modated itself.  Each  is  full,  neither  is  final.  Nothing  is 
final  with  God  nor  with  His  Christ.  Still  He  says:  "  What 
I  do  thou  knowest  not  now,  but  thou  shalt  know  hereafter." 

For  preparation  is  always  more  than  prediction.  The 
training  of  the  Twelve  was  a  facsimile,  in  the  small,  of  the 
training  of  the  Church,  still  uncompleted. 

What  silly  questions  they  asked,  what  absurd  requests 
they  made,  and  with  what  wisdom  they  were  postponed. 
The  process  is  so  natural  that  we  do  not  realize  what  a  dis- 
tance they  had  traveled  between  the  fifth  chapter  of  Mat- 
thew and  the  fifteenth  chapter  of  the  Acts.  How  the  spirit- 
ual landscape  has  widened  before  them!  Their  minds  are 
clearing,  they  become  positive,  convincing,  their  words  seize 
men  for  God. 

The  fifth  book  of  the  New  Testament  is  a  key  and  a  bond. 
What  was  reserved  because  before  premature  is  now  an  open 
secret.  The  epistles  became  both  grand  explanations  and 
tremendous  prophecies.  They  reach  back  of  Genesis  and 
beyond  the  Apocalypse.  We  see  the  fishermen  become  giants 
and  the  purblind  Pharisee  of  Tarsus  opens  his  eyes  upon  the 
vistas  of  eternity.  The  "  progress  of  doctrine  "  in  the  New 
52 


Testament  is  a  symbol  of  its  progress  in  the  comprehensions 
of  men.  Slowly  men  learn  Christ,  blinking  as  those  unclos- 
eted  at  noon.  Fallow  ages  wait  upon  mortal  dullness,  so 
patient  is  our  God. 

The  seed  grows,  but  it  grows  secretly,  and  culminations 
are  delayed  until  the  world  can  bear  them.  God  is  always 
ahead  of  the  times.  The  men  who  strive  to  be  abreast  of 
the  colors  are  they  who  lead  their  generations.  Who  of  you 
will  march  there? 

The  evangelists  were  not  stenographers.  They  gave  but 
a  sketch  of  our  Lord's  deeds  and  words.  They  did  not  min- 
ister even  to  a  reverent  curiosity.  The  Gospel  will  have 
news  for  us  in  the  life  to  come.  Eighteen  years  of  Christ's 
life  is  condensed  into  three  or  four  sentences. 

And  not  even  yet  have  we  wrought  His  precepts  to  a  tithe 
of  their  logical  conclusions.  Still  unguessed  corollaries  of 
thought  and  duty  lie  in  this  treasure  which  our  shafts  have 
so  scantily  mined.  Which  of  us  can  imagine  that  he  has 
sighted  the  circumference  of  the  Lord's  prayer  ?  Thank 
God  if  we  have  learned  its  centre ! 

It  is  the  attainment  of  each  period  that  makes  possible  its 
successor.  None  is  independent,  none  is  final,  and  God 
alone  is  infallible.  He  who  has  guided,  still  guides.  His 
truth  is  perennial  and  becomes  concrete  in  each  generation. 
The  idolatry  of  any  one  cycle,  equally  with  the  neglect  of 
any,  is  disloyalty  to  the  presidency  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  As 
long  as  man  listens,  God  speaks.  He  has  yet  many  things 
to  say,  in  English,  that  we  could  not  bear  now.  Therefore, 
our  transcript  of  God's  meaning,  the  statement  of  our 
apprehensions  of  it,  must  ever  widen.  We  must  take  obser- 
vation each  noon.  One  Sun,  but  many  seas,  many  shores. 
Providence  is  a  biological  science.  Moral  history  is  a  grow- 
ing volume.  All  is  concentric,  nay,  Christocentric;  but  about 
that  centre  each  lengthening  century  describes  an  ampler 
circle.  Every  life  works  with  the  equation  of  the  spiral. 
God's  consummations  are  as  gradual  as  they  are  resistless. 

53 


Reserves  and  remainders  await  our  strength.  Timely  reti- 
cence subtends  amazing  yet  all- consistent  movement  among 
Earth's  peoples.  We  can  no  more  set  the  clock  of  Christen- 
dom forward  than  we  can  turn  it  back.  The  new  authority 
that  was  to  supplant  Greece,  new  ideals,  new  sciences,  new 
arts  —  all  these  ( and  that  not  by  destruction  but  by  ful- 
filment )  were  capsulate  in  the  Gospel.  Again  and  again 
man  has  sung,  and  truly, 

"  We  were  the  first  that  ever  burst 
Into  that  silent  sea." 

but  the  silent  sea  becomes  a  thorofare,  the  wilderness  a  gar- 
den, the  lone  hill  an  observatory. 

We  would  be  nonplussed  and  stunned  were  the  vision 
opened  to  us  too  soon  of  what  the  world  and  man  will  be 
like  when  the  unfathomable  petition  is  answered:  "Thy 
will  be  done  on  Earth,  as  it  is  in  Heaven." 

The  latest  edition  is  never  the  last.  Each  new  evolution 
of  manifolded  wisdom  is  "  revised  and  enlarged."  Veil  after 
veil  is  rent  in  twain,  and  still  there  are  unexplored  remainders 
whose  reservation  is  alluring.  The  Sun  of  righteousness  is 
not  burnt  out,  and  the  harvests  of  today  are  the  seed  of 
tomorrow.  We  have  yet  more  to  learn.  As  beginners,  we 
are  prone  to  overrate  our  powers.  We  say,  as  Peter  once 
said  it,  "  Why  cannot  we  follow  Thee  now  ?  "  We  forget 
the  commentary  of  experience.  We  would  force  the  mystery 
and  discount  God  ! 

In  our  grasp  of  Christ's  meaning  for  ourselves  and  for 
mankind  there  must  be  a  constant  revision  and  recombina- 
tion, along  with  a  hearty  appreciation  of  all  new  light.  The 
terms  of  physical  science  discredit  today  what  once  were  its 
undisputed  formulas.  In  two  generations  it  will,  no  doubt, 
retire  some  of  its  present  theories  as  now  it  abandons 
"  epicycles  "  and  "  phlogiston." 

But  the  bigger  knowledge  can  never  make  the  idea  of  God 
smaller.  The  Word  will  still  fill  the  world.  With  whatever 
54 


light  is  reflected  in  the  mirror  there  will  evermore  shine  there 
one  face !  The  potencies  of  splendid  and  unimagined  days  are 
in  that  "  Arch-chemic  Sun."  "  We  have  seen  but  a  part  of 
His  ways."  The  evangel  that  makes  creature  at  one  with 
his  Creator  is  a  spectroscope,  revealing  the  elemental  unity  of 
all  moral  worlds,  and  for  this  world  it  will  be  found  not  only 
to  meet,  but  also  be  found  to  have  made  each  new  time.  Its 
applications  to  life  exceed  all  that  we  have  imagined.  "  Suf- 
fer it  to  be  so  now  "  silences  many  of  our  shallow  objections. 
"  The  half  is  not  told  us."  The  interstitial  stars  in  Christ's 
sight  gleam  already.  What  could  Galileo  have  done  with 
the  Yerkes  glass?  But  what  will  that  be  when  the  sugges- 
tion of  the  eye  of  the  fly  is  fully  wrought  out  and  compound 
lenses  gather  at  one  point  a  cone  of  rays  whose  base  diame- 
ter is  forty  feet,  not  four? 

We  are  still  in  the  rudiments  and  see  with  kitten-sight! 
And  if  our  grasp  of  matter  is  still  so  primitive,  need  we 
wonder  that  in  the  realm  of  purpose  God  still  garments 
Himself  with  unapproachable  light?  He  tempers  His  won- 
ders while  He  trains  man  up  toward  them,  and  amid  all 
Apocalypse  "  seals  up  the  things  which  seven  thunders 
utter."     In  this  open  Bible  there  is  that  written  of  which 

"  Not  Gabriel  asks  the  reason  why, 
Nor  God  the  reason  gives." 

Much  is  withheld  against  that  day  whereof  the  Master  of 
all  hearts  declared,  "  Ye  shall  ask  Me  no  question."  He 
knows  that  the  suspension  of  much  of  our  curiosity  in  no 
wise  interferes  with  present  obedience,  and  checks  many  an 
impertinence  of  over-importunity  with  that  recorded  irony, 
"  Your  time  is  always  ready!  " 

When  "  difficulties  vainly  curious  and  doubts  impossible 
to  be  solved  "  excite  us,  we  may  well  recite  that  touching 
prayer  of  burly  Sam  Johnson,  "  against  inquisitive  and  per- 
plexing thoughts."  It  is  a  wise  prayer  for  the  wisest  man, 
and  to  the  wisest,  easiest.     In  every  loving  ear  there  sounds 

55 


a  constant  whisper :  "  I  have  yet  many  things  to  say  unto 
you."  If  this  great  idea  of  gracious  postponement  has  at 
all  fastened  your  attention,  you  have  seen  how  it  clarifies 
both  Scripture  and  life,  and  how  it  answers  both  fear  and 
hope.  It  affirms  the  continuity  of  Christ.  It  vitalizes  all 
present  attainments.  It  shows  how  each  broader  and  deeper 
day  "  hath  new  needs  and  new  helps  for  these." 

It  articulates  all  tenses  and  binds  together  the  physical 
unity  of  all  worlds  as  a  scene  for  the  dramatic  unity  of  all 
events.  It  makes  time  only  a  mode  of  thought,  and  life 
omnipresent.  Crisis  may  introduce  crisis,  but  omniscience 
includes  all  issues.  Queries  to  be  solved,  doubts  to  be  re- 
solved, duties  to  be  done,  trials  to  be  borne  —  the  Word 
is  nigh.  We  have  read  the  Pilgrim's  Progress  as  boys;  we 
shall  understand  it  as  men.     The  skies  will  deepen. 

"  What  first  we  guessed  as  points,  I  now  know  stars." 
You  will  arrive  where  you  could  no  more  return  to  your  old 
measures  than  the  New  York  Central  Railway  could  put  its 
business  back  upon  a  single  track  system! 

You  may  blanch  when  Christ  puts  into  your  hand  that 
cup  whereof  you  now  think  to  say,  "  We  are  able  to  drink 
it";  but  you  will  not  blench  if  you  have  learned  that  He 
never  asks  of  you  more  than  you  can  bear.  We  have  been 
enabled  to  meet  many  things  that  seemed  impossible;  we 
shall  be  again.  Power  shall  rest  upon  us  and  He  shall  "de- 
liver our  souls  in  peace  from  the  battle  that  is  against  us." 

"  My  God,  I  would  not  long  to  see 
My  fate  with  curious  eyes." 

We  want  no  palmistry  save  that  of  His  wounded  hand. 
It  is  not  the  time  table,  but  the  engineer,  that  brings  the 
train  thro.  Devotion  does  not  demand  demonstration. 
One  can  be  a  filial  son  yet  not  have  read  his  father's  will. 

I  have  thus  far  elaborated  an  idea  that,  rightly  held,  com- 
mands both  modesty  and  hope,  and  in  them  each,  deter- 
mined courage.     Diffidence   toward  our  own  knowledge  as 

56 


final  and  confidence  in  God's  wisdom  as  infallible,  is  that 
which  sets  forward  the  world  and  our  own  souls.  This  spirit 
of  outlook  surpasses  every  yesterday  and  lives  under  a  per- 
petual dawn.  The  unhasting,  unresting,  evolution  of  God's 
plan  is  "  the  master  light  of  all  our  seeing."  It  is  more 
penetrative  than  any  cathode  ray.  It  saves  us  from  indif- 
ference and  from  irresolution.  It  applies  old  truth  to  the 
new  time,  and  with  perennial  revelation  declares  the  world 
to  be  a  divine  laboratory.  The  book  written  and  history 
yet  writing,  —  the  busy  Spirit  is  alive  in  both.  Withheld 
completions,  reserved  revelations,  suspended  harmonies  — 
these  make  life  more  than  logic,  and  prove  Christ  the 
dateless  Son  of  God.  We  are  all  the  pupils  of  an  inex- 
haustible Teacher,  finding 

"     *    *    progress,  man's  distinctive  mark  alone, 
Not  God's,  and  not  the  beasts';  God  is,  they  are, 
Man  partly  is  and  partly  hopes  to  be." 

The  times  and  seasons  of  human  affairs  find  here  their  in- 
terpretation and  forecast.  Races  and  empires  and  authori- 
ties and  constitutions  and  suffrages  write  large  the  text 
with  which  we  have  dealt.  The  Church,  the  State,  custom 
and  statute,  all  that  the  society  of  man  means  and  can 
mean,  are  to  demonstrate  that  Christ  has  "  yet  many  things 
to  say."  The  signs  of  the  times  are  a  holy  horoscope. 
Awakened  Japan;  crude  China;  semi-barbaric  Russia;  hectic 
France;  imperious  Germany;  the  two  Englands  —  one  the 
England  of  Wyckliffe  and  Milton  and  Browning,  the  other 
the  England  of  miserly  diplomacy  whose  robes  are  now 
splotched  with  the  wet  blood  of  Armenia;  two  Americas  — 
the  one  leal  to  her  high  opportunity,  the  other  mad  for 
money  and  thinking  to  tamper  with  the  very  standards  of 
honesty  —  all  this  collision  of  local  advantage  and  of  univer- 
sal truth;  Christ  sits  serene  above  the  floods,  and  by  all 
changes  and  crises,  collisions,  catastrophes,  utters  His  decree 
and  brings  in  His  kingdom.  Fight  under  that  flag,  ye  who 
are  men!     New  courage  shall  discover  a  new  world. 

57 


This  law  of  graded  advance  may  well  guide  us  in  our  con- 
sideration of  that  which  we  await  for  the  College  of  our  love. 
The  constant  uses  and  survives  the  transient.  Whatever 
has  been  good  and  is  better,  implies,  begins,  and  assures  the 
best  that  is  to  be.  Forms  pass,  but  life  indefeasible  and 
crescent,  weaves  its  changing  robe,  transcending  and  surviv- 
ing earlier  measures.  1793  was  our  day  of  small  things,  as 
all  seminal  days  are  outwardly  small.  They  called  the  rude 
frame  building,  for  six  years  uncompleted,  "  Kirkland's 
folly  ";  but  our  seer  Samuel  was  a  true  futurist  and  builded 
more  than  he  foresaw  or  could  foretell.  His  bones  lie  yon- 
der in  goodly  and  growing  company,  but  the  school  is  the 
spiritual  body  wherein  "  he  being  dead,  yet  speaketh."  The 
little  house  there  is  a  parable.  That  patriotic,  reverent  and 
confident  beginning  lived.  Because  it  lived  it  increased.  It 
shall  live,  and  live  there,  drawing  ever  upon  the  elastic  and 
un  was  ting  forces  which  speak  alike  in  science  and  in  psalm. 
There  reason  and  reverence  shall  go  hand  in  hand.  There, 
long  after  our  forms  are  dust,  shall  the  kindly  mother  sit  in 
her  bowered  door  and  in  her  plain,  unwavering  loveliness 
smile  upon  her  children,  rocking  her  dear,  old-fashioned 
cradle  and  holding  tender  converse  with  her  returning  family. 
With  beautiful,  undimming  eyes  she  shall  survey  the  calm 
valley,  with  its  scenes  that  change  with  every  upward  step, 
and  that  are  never  two  days  the  same;  she  shall  muse  upon 
the  grey  and  violet  hills,  upon  all  the  fugitive  beauties  of 
the  world  and  the  shimmering  skies  beyond  them,  until 
Earth's  last  sunset  shall  enfold  her,  and  eternity's  first 
morning,  with  all  its  tremulous  mystery  of  light,  shall  kiss 
her  tranquil  and  triumphant  brow.  Thro  an  adolescence  not 
without  the  ills  of  infancy,  the  Academy  grew  up  to  the  es- 
tate of  the  College,  merging  its  name  in  that  of  its  earlier 
lover.  But  the  hard-won  charter  of  1812  was  a  permission 
rather  than  a  pledge,  a  fond  hope  rather  than  an  assurance. 
The  graduates  of  1814  could  now  barely  enter  Sophomore, 
and  that  under  conditions. 

58 


Along  a  devious  channel,  with  many  rifts  and  eddies  and 
shifting  snags,  the  current  has  flowed,  but  wider,  deeper, 
past  these  years  four-score  and  four.  Many  benevolent 
tributaries  and  many  unseen  springs  of  prayer  and  sacrifice 
have  fed  its  increase,  until  now  by  its  banks  are  stately  trees, 
whose  roots  its  waters  have  sustained  and  whose  interlaced 
shadows  waver  upon  its  placid  breadth. 

Hamilton  is  not  a  gourd  of  yesterday,  but  a  goodly  vine 
with  fruitful  boughs,  and  long  tomorrows  are  to  come.  Sons 
and  grandsons  and  godsons  are  hers,  and  she  is  theirs  to  love 
and  to  cherish.  I  speak  to  a  throng  of  them  today,  and  I 
set  home  to  them  all  the  word  of  the  providential  and  per- 
petual Christ,  "  I  have  yet  many  things  to  say  unto  you  !  " 
I  speak  out  boldly,  as  I  ought  to,  to  new  friends  and  old, 
and  urge  them  to  look  upon  this  stubborn  and  stalwart  work 
of  ours  and  to  ask  themselves  where  they  can  more  wisely 
bestow  their  substance,  or  in  better  hope  of  its  persistent 
benefit  to  the  generations  to  be  ?  Who  will  come  to  the 
kingdom  for  such  a  time  as  this  and  join  their  names  in  im- 
mortal usefulness  with  those  of  Hamilton  and  Kirkland  ? 

Men  of  the  Class  of  '96 : 

Up,  all  of  you  !  Not  for  today  only,  but  for  tomorrow 
and  the  days  after.  "  Is  not  the  Lord  gone  out  before  you  ?" 
Hear  Christ  !  Hear  all  He  yet  will  say  to  you.  The  word 
is  nigh  you.  Obtuse  to  temptation  and  obstinately  dutiful, 
stand  away  from  those  who  prefer  to  get  thro  life  by  the 
dishonor  system!  Renounce,  denounce,  the  worships  of 
Gain.  Stand  out  from  among  the  breed  of  idlers  and  snobs. 
Accept  the  ordination  of  duty. 

This  impetuous  and  momentous  time  calls  for  resolute 
and  muscled  character,  brains  unillusioned  by  partial  ideas, 
souls  so  sympathetic  with  globed  and  celestial  truth  as  to  be 
superior  to  segmental  and  terrestial  half-truths.  Remember 
every  pathway  and  door,  every  leafy  aisle^of  quiet  and 
each  dreaming  vista  of  that  good  place  up  yonder,  and  carry 

59 


a  country  heart  into  the  whirl  of  crowds  and  the  tumult  of 
cities.  Be  critics  always  and  cynics  never.  Whatever  may 
go  wrong,  do  you  go  right,  and  so  the  mildew  of  pessimism, 
the  canker  of  envy,  and  the  dry-rot  of  selfishness  shall  not 
come  near  your  souls.  Have  such  an  idealism  as  thrilled  in 
those  lines  of  Holmes  that  preserved  the  good  ship  Constitu- 
tion —  a  sense  of  the  past,  of  "  our  father's  God,"  and  of 
His  continuity,  and  His  hand  shall  pilot  you  safe  home  to 
port.     Be  learners  to  the  last,  for 

"  Since  all  things  suffer  change  save  God  the  Truth, 
Man  apprehends  Him  newly  at  each  stage. 

Whereat  Earth's  ladder  drops,  its  service  done, 
And  nothing  shall  prove  twice  what  once  was  proved." 

It  is  this  that  shall  round  the  age  of  science  into  the  age 
of  song. 

Fare  you  all  well  !  My  own  good-by  to  you  is  one  with 
no  unpleasant  recollections  and  with  many  bright  ones.  I 
have  seen  you  grow.  Grow  on,  and  in  the  day  of  the  goal 
and  the  garland,  when  the  pearly  citadels  of  Heaven  peal  out 
their  welcome  to  all  faithful  disciples,  may  each  of  us  be 
there  to  hear,  amid  all  lesser  salutations,  this:  "  I  have  yet 
many  things  to  say  unto  you  ! " 


00 


THE  ABUNDANT  LIFE 

TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS,  JUNE  20,  1897 
J  came  that  they  may  have  life,  and  may  have  it  abundantly.     John  10:10 

It  is  the  privilege  which  my  office  confers  to  give  to  each 
class,  upon  the  threshold  of  its  exit  from  this  College,  a  last 
word  of  instruction,  and  to  make  to  them  a  final  appeal  in 
the  name  of  God.  For  the  fifth  time  I  attempt  this  duty. 
It  is  altogether  fitting  that  a  college  course  which  seeks  to 
bind  and  crown  all  its  methods  with  the  science  of  obliga- 
tion, and  which  has  ever  recognized  the  hallowing  motives 
of  a  supreme  allegiance,  which  has  continually  blended  de- 
votion with  inculcation,  which  does  not  admit  the  arbitrary 
division  between  the  secular  and  the  sacred,  which  teaches 
that  all  the  utilities  of  knowledge  find  their  full  significance 
only  in  the  rational  and  reverent  acceptance  of  "  man's  chief 
end," —  that  such  a  college  course  should  culminate  in  a  de- 
vout meditation  and  in  psalms  of  dedication  and  hope. 

The  Shepherd  of  all  men  declares  in  this  our  text  that  His 
mission  is  to  confer  the  abundant  life.  And  I  make  it  my 
present  errand  to  point  you  toward  such  a  life  and  to  its 
standards  and  guarantees.  Life  is  the  thing  —  boundless  as 
its  Lord  and  Giver  —  satisfying,  infrustrable,  immortal. 

There  are  never  lacking  cynical  and  satirical  lips  to  sneer 
at  the  enthusiasm  and  eager  confidence  of  graduating  men; 
but  the  pathetic  courage  and  the  ardent  assurance  of  youth 
is  given  continually  to  replace  the  nullity  and  numbness  of 
those  whose  own  inferior  accomplishment  seduces  them  to 
question  the  cause  and  abandon  the  fight.  Mine  be  the 
task  rather  to  challenge  the  utmost  resolution  of  youth,  and 
to  summon  its  energy,  undaunted  by  other  failures  and  de- 
sertions, to  tie  sword  to  wrist,  enlisted  for  all  the  battle  and 
for  the  whole  war.  Self  and  failure  menace  you,  but  "  the 
law  of  the  spirit  of  Life  in  Jesus  Christ  "  shall  make  you 
free  and  conquering. 

61 


Modern  laboratories  have  rendered  us  familiar  with  the 
word  Biology.  It  includes  so  much,  that  in  the  interests  of 
exactness  its  teachers  are  already  insisting  upon  replacing 
the  term  by  its  subdivisions.  It  has  been  used  as  a  title  for 
the  science  of  all  the  forms  of  all  life;  but  that  is  Morphol- 
ogy.    Histology,  Anatomy,  Physiology  are  included  under  it. 

Biology  is,  accurately,  the  Science  of  Life.  Thus  it  is  the 
widest  possible  term  for  all  vital  fact,  and  it  includes  even 
Theology.  For  God  is  Life.  Gathering  its  subject-matter 
all  the  way  from  Botany  to  Ethics,  Biology  comprehends  far 
more  than  the  realm  of  appearance.  It  must  take  in  Sociol- 
ogy, as  that  takes  in  the  relations  not  of  men  only,  but  of  all 
intelligent  beings.  Surely,  if  technical,  this  is  not  obscure, 
and  it  affirms  that  life  comprises  all  the  relations  of  ani- 
mate creatures,  and  their  joint  relation  to  the  Creator. 
Here  at  last  is  the  ultimate  unity. 

Relation  is  not  optional,  but  inevitable.  It  is  not  acci- 
dental, it  is  articulated  —  an  organism.  Its  implications  are 
commands.  Therefore  no  arbitrarily  partial  relation,  nor 
any  partiality  toward  a  few  of  its  features,  can  touch  the 
ends  of  being.  Christ  came  to  teach  Biology  —  in  its  broad- 
est sense,  that  !  He  made  it  in  His  own  person  an  induc- 
tive science!  He  revealed  its  innermost  secret  and  its  out- 
most abundance. 

He  renounced  the  anti-social  spirit  of  self,  and  giving  His 
life  a  ransom  of  others,  nailed  to  His  cross  the  ordinances  of 
caste  and  clan.  I  do  not  shrink  from  saying  that  those  two 
cardinal  maxims  of  Louis  Blanc  are  just:  "  From  each  ac- 
cording to  his  capacity,  to  each  according  to  his  need,"  and, 
"  The  more  a  man  can,  the  more  he  ought."  I  say  that 
these  are  just;  for  closely  they  paraphrase  the  word  of  the 
Son  of  Man:  "  He  that  is  chief  among  you,  let  him  be  the 
servant  of  all."  All  the  walls  of  artificial  demarcation  and 
social  cruelty  preach  that  with  a  strident  voice.  Flatly  the 
original  Gospel  joins  issue  with  that  fictitious  and  fastidious 
self-importance  which  praises  ability  at  the  expense  of  ser- 

62 


viceability,  and  suffers  patronizing  to  supplant  sympathy. 
The  word  Socialism  need  not  scare  us.  Some  kind  we  must 
have,  God's  kind,  or  Satan's. 

To  gush  and  sentimentalize  and  dabble  with  human  prob- 
lems as  a  pretty  fad  and  incidental  diversion  can  never  help 
the  struggling  world.  The  squadrons  of  power  that  shall 
ride  gloriously  to  "  let  in  the  law  "  are  not  mounted  upon 
hobby-horses.  The  "  sons  and  daughters  that  prophesy  " 
are  not  such  as  revel  in  merely  theatrical  statistics  and  sigh 
over  sorrows  they  never  touched  with  a  little  finger:  but  are 
such  as  are  in  earnest  to  get  something  done,  even  if  they 
have  to  do  it  themselves. 

The  school  girl  at  Niagara  exclaimed,  "  Isn't  it  cunning!" 
Yes,  it  is  cunning  —  don't  fall  in  ! 

Bishop  Westcott  somewhere  writes :  "Little  thoughts  do 
not  fit  little  duties.  In  the  fulfillment  of  simple  routine  we 
need,  more  than  anywhere  else,  the  quickening  influence  of 
the  highest  motive." 

The  largest  possible  life  must  have  the  truest  possible  cen- 
tre, and  must  live  from  that  in  its  detail.  A  large  life  is  ex- 
pensive. It  costs  life  —  that,  and  no  less.  He  who  speaks 
to  us  knew  that,  and  paid  the  price. 

"All  the  words  of  life  "  are  in  Him,  and  His  ideas  go  to 
the  bottom  of  every  social  and  personal  question,  with  its 
exactions  and  its  rewards.  The  Christianity  of  Christ, 
urging  that  life  is  more  than  its  raiment,  not  resting  upon  a 
consensus  of  scholars  but  upon  the  obedience  of  disciples, 
cares  nothing  for  conventional  adulterations,  and  demands 
that  the  interior  thought  shall  be  incarnated  in  the  exterior 
conduct.  He  showed  a  principle  that  worked,  Who  offers  us 
His  own  life  only  upon  His  own  terms.  One  cannot  spring 
an  arch  from  a  single  pier,  and  Christ  cares  naught  for  the 
accurate  theory  that  does  not  bend  over  to  the  solid  expres- 
sion of  deed. 

The  abundant  life  has  many  outlets,  but  one  source,  as  its 
chemic,   caloric,   actinic   rays    proceed  from   the   one   Sun. 

63 


Each  whole  life  is  a  revised  version  of  the  Gospel.  Great 
expression  waits  upon  great  purpose.  The  Father  does  not 
cast  us  off  because  we  let  go  the  best  He  could  help  us  to: 
but  he  helps  us  to  the  next  best,  even  down  to  the  smallest. 
What  is  to  hinder  any  one  of  you  from  being  truly  great  ? 
Nothing  but  your  own  refusal  ! 

The  Master  of  history  being  in  evidence,  life  is  abundant 
in  its  declining  to  put  up  with  any  second-rate.  Saving  may 
be  a  virtue  or  a  vice. 

Refusal  to  waste  upon  what  is  unworthy  implies  ability  to 
give  all  for  the  pearl  of  price.  Spend  life  we  must,  as  we  go; 
the  crucial  question  is  —  What  for  ?  It  is  like  the  manna. 
We  may  leave  it  —  wasted.  Use  it  —  to  live  more.  Keep 
it  — to  rot.  Today's  usufruct  of  power  withers  if  we  at- 
tempt to  hold  it  for  tomorrow.  We  may  squander,  or  use, 
today:  we  cannot  save  it  over. 

You  have  a  personal  capital,  to  turn  over  with  interest  or  to 
hide  in  a  hole.  What  a  man  spends  he  has,  what  he  keeps 
spends  him.  Life,  like  money,  is  not  a  value  except  as  it  is 
a  medium  of  exchange.  It  is  a  measure  of  value.  As  he 
hits  the  happy  mean  between  a  money-lover  and  a  money- 
waster  who  knows  what  a  dollar  is  worth  and  what  it  is  not 
worth,  so  your  supreme  question  is:  "  What  shall  I  spend 
life  for,  to  make  it  get  the  most  ?  " 

Save  yourself  for  yourself,  you  lose  yourself !  Spend  your- 
self with  Christ  and  you  gain  His  life,  and  with  it  yours. 
This  is  the  vital  paradox.  "  Except  a  corn  of  wheat  fall 
into  the  ground  and  die  it  abide th  alone."  Natural  law 
answers  spiritual.  Life  is  reproduced  by  transmutation.  It 
is  not  a  form,  it  is  a  self-conscious  motion  thro  form.  The 
abundant  life  is  that  which  most  submits  to  the  law  of  giv- 
ing. We  only  have  what  we  bestow.  Selfishness  then  is 
suicide.  He  lives  largest  who  confers  most.  Living  is  loving, 
and  "  love  seeketh  not  her  own."  He  who  saves  others,  him- 
self does  not  save.  Only  that  which  a  man  does  not  save 
saves  him.    He  revealed  that,  Who  "  by  death  destroyed  the 

04 


power  of  death  ! "  An  eye  rolled  inward  loses  the  light  and 
sees  nothing.  Self  because  so  small  a  goal  is  futile  and  fatal. 
It  is  "  by  its  means  defeated  of  its  ends."  Atrophy  !  "  A 
man's  life  consisteth  not  in  the  abundance  of  the  things 
which  he  possesseth."     It  is  not  how  much,  but  whereunto  ! 

Receive  a  great  and  heavenly  vision  of  the  law  of  nobility 
as  the  Supreme  Man  showed  it,  and  you  will  see  that  the 
abundant  life  has  a  motive  that  will  hold  taut  as  a  cable  in  a 
storm,  and  that  sounds  like  a  harp.  This  high  thrift  does  not 
heed  the  code  of  usage  which  asks  what  it  must  not  do  and 
what  it  must  give  up  — that  is  picayune  and  sordid :  but  rather 
it  turns  from  negative  virtues  to  positive,  ejects  the  lower 
conception,  and  from  the  tyranny  of  verboten  turns  to  the  free- 
dom of  great  permissions  —  "  against  which  there  is  no  law." 

This  is  the  assertion  of  the  true,  the  only,  the  boundless 
manhood.  The  young  man  who  "  went  away  "  was  he  who 
refused  this  abundance.     He  dared  not  take  the  best. 

But  there  was  one  who  dared,  who  at  the  parting  of  the 
ways  said,  "  Lord,  what  wilt  Thou  have  me  to  do  ?  "  and 
then  did  what  was  showed  him  to  the  last  !  It  was  he  who 
learned  to  write,  "  all  things  are  yours."  He  accepted  the 
whole  life.  Not  lazy,  apologetic,  tentative,  procrastinating, 
he  lived  constructively  and  found  "  all  the  fulness  of  God." 
He  found  a  life  worth  living.  No  carpet-knight  this  Paul  ! 
Within  prison  walls  he  could  testify,  "  I  have  all,  and 
abound  !  "  This  "  little  gleam  of  time  between  two  eterni- 
ties "  furnished  him  a  commanding  outlook.  "Things 
present  and  things  to  come  "  stood  in  complete  relation  to 
his  total  allegiance. 

His  transcendant  faith  knew  none  of  the  whimperings  and 
sarcasms  which  reveal  the  abject  disappointment  of  low 
motives. 

Circe  has  potions  for  all  who  will  take  them  —  swine- 
herdess  that  she  is  !     Stop  your  ears  and  sail  by  ! 

All  that  is  noblest  is  within  reach  of  him  who  wills  it. 

"  Man  is  one  world,  and  hath  another  to  attend  him  "  — 


65 


Angels  minister  to  one  whose  masterful  determination 
refuses  the  beguilement  of  secondary  things. 

He  lives  most,  not  who  lives  longest,  but  who  lives  deepest, 
broadest,  hardest  —  who  increases  his  resultant  sum  by 
shortening  each  process.  Time  is  a  different  thing  to  each 
man;  for  to  each  it  is  measured  by  what  he  makes  it  con- 
tain. Ten  years  of  one  man's  time  may  equal  thirty  of 
another's.     Stephen  lived  more  than  Methuselah  ! 

To  open  your  being  to  the  big  thoughts,  to  the  wide  sym- 
pathies, to  the  determinative,  aggressive  and  dominant 
activities  —  that  is  to  "  abound  exceedingly."  Who  meas- 
ures the  life  of  Lincoln  by  its  mere  years  ? 

Live  your  own  lives;  borrow  no  leave  to  be;  dare  the 
heights  of  duty.  It  is  a  tremulous  and  tremendous  time  in 
which  your  days  are  cast.  It  needs  leaders  and  will  scorn 
laggards.  Church  and  State,  the  whole  complex  of  society 
cries  out,  "Whom  shall  we  send,  and  who  will  go  for  us  ? 
Only  the  most  obdurate  goodness  can  handle  the  tools  of 
manhood.  Humanity  comes  to  its  noon.  It  is  nothing  to 
meet  the  mob  of  opinions  with  blank  cartridges  when  the 
very  standards  of  personal  truth  are  roughly  assaulted.  We 
inherit  and  we  must  match  the  inkstand  of  Luther,  the  tele- 
scope of  Galileo,  Latimer's  candle,  Beza's  anvil,  the  axe  of 
John  the  Baptist,  the  pen  of  Lincoln.  You  are  summoned 
to  be  so  much  what  you  may  be,  that  a  good  politician  can 
no  longer  be  described  as  "  a  man  that  will  stay  bought," 
that  law  shall  become  less  "  the  science  of  evading  justice," 
that  religion  shall  seem  less  "  a  straddling  of  two  worlds  !  " 
A  business  man  and  dear  friend  of  mine  wrote  me  a  few  days 
since:  "  Ability  is  plenty  and  smartness  overabundant :  but 
blank,  square  honesty  is,  oh,  how  scarce."  Honest  with 
yourselves,  your  fellow  men,  your  God,  may  you  make  it 
less  scarce. 

Men  of  the  Class  of  '97 : 

Toil  the  toils  of  men  until   your   days   are  done  !     Give 

66 


your  very  best  and  every  best  to  the  tasks  to  which  you  go. 
Run  with  the  pacemakers  and  help  to  break  the  records. 

Never  forget  the  dreams  and  aspirations  of  the  youthful 
days  when  you  were  college  boys  becoming  God's  men. 
Never  forget  that  old  campus,  veiled  in  the  meshes  of  May 
moonlight  or  scarfed  in  the  soft  draperies  of  the  Indian  sum- 
mer. Cry  still  the  cry  of  the  winter  sled  way  —  "  Road  ! 
Road  ! "  Men  will  ever  give  the  path  to  momentum. 
Crowds  gather  at  the  exhibitions  of  that  wonderful  modern 
invention,  the  biograph,  because  all  sense  of  motion  is  exhil- 
arating. Be  real,  and  beyond  all  simulation  you  shall  attract 
men  by  a  better  impulse  than  curiosity.  In  life  as  in  par- 
liamentary law,  to  do  anything  some  one  must  make  a 
motion.  If  you  are  to  carry  anything  in  this  world's  quorum 
you  must  get  the  floor.  As  time  slips  in  small  change  from 
your  purses,  cherish  with  gratitude  the  memory  of  these 
crystal  days,  and  when  your  war  is  fully  on  recall  each  item 
of  tactics  and  equipment  here  taught  and  taken.  Your 
record  is  one  of  honor,  of  faithful,  scholarly  toil,  of  order  and 
loyalty.  We  who  stay  on  will  drink  your  health  at  the  old 
well,  and  name  with  pride  a  class  whose  life  was  not  meas- 
ured by  quantity  but  by  quality.  I  saw  you  enter,  I  shout 
you  Godspeed  as  you  depart.  You  came  to  us  when  much 
was  but  an  eager  hope  that  now  merges  toward  assurance. 
From  all  your  future  stations  send  us  back  your  greetings  — 
nay,  bring  them,  often.  Faces  will  change  —  your  comrades 
and  more  slowly  your  instructors  —  but  surely  all  of  them 
will  pass.  Hamilton  will  always  be  your  own  —  "  to  have 
and  to  hold,  to  love  and  to  cherish."  Wear  with  honor  those 
historic  colors  which  Kirkland  wore  at  Fort  Stanwix  while 
over  Oneida's  virgin  fortress  waved  the  first  stars  and  stripes. 
By  and  by,  oh  that  it  might  be  mine  once  more  to  call  your 
roll  and  no  man  absent,  having  passed  between  the  piers  of 
the  rainbow  and  obtaining  all  of  us  "  an  abundant  entrance 
into  the  eternal  kingdom."     Good-by  !     Nay, —  Au  revoir  I 

67 


OPTIMISM  AND  PESSIMISM 

TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS,  JUNE  26,  1898 

We  know  that  to  them  that  love  God  all  things  work  together  for  good. 

Romans  8:28. 

Again  the  summer  and  the  final  days  of  the  college  life  of 
a  class.  Once  more  the  greetings  and  the  good-bys.  Swift 
hours  —  romantic  and  pathetic,  sweet  and  sad.  A  happy 
dream,  "  which  is  not  all  a  dream,"  is  for  you  to  whom  this 
occasion  chiefly  belongs,  well-nigh  spent. 

"  Something  beautiful  is  vanished, 

And  we  sigh  for  it  in  vain; 
We  behold  it  everywhere, 
On  the  earth  and  in  the  air, 

But  it  it  never  comes  again." 

Now  we  clear  a  little  space  where  yesterday  salutes  to- 
morrow. After  our  good  old  custom  we  make  one  more 
Sunday  hour,  and  in  it  may  your  hearts  preach  to  you  in 
better  than  my  words.  My  part  is  but  a  prompter's  part. 
Listen  to  your  own  searching  thoughts  and  grasp  that  warm, 
invisible  hand  which  is  not  far  from  every  one  of  you. 

Simple  and  vast,  our  text,  with  its  dozen  monosyllables, 
twists  together  innumerable  strands  of  suggestions  and 
tethers  us  to  all  that  is  brave  and  enduring.  It  has  many 
implications.  Fixed  in  the  web  of  its  great  chapter  it  traces 
the  inseparability  of  God's  children  from  God's  love,  and 
introduces  that  climax  in  which,  challenging  peril  and  pain, 
time  and  eternity,  death  and  demons,  faith  soars  from  the 
depths  of  weakness  to  the  bosom  of  God.  It  leaps  into  the 
invincible  sureties  of  that  covenant  whose  chain  of  salvation 
binds  loyalty  with  eternity.  Purpose  and  power  have  forged 
it,  and  there  is  no  link  missing.  Plan,  pledge,  providence, 
make  inviolable  sequence  from  the  dateless  foreknowledge  to 

68 


the  utmost  glory.  "  If  God  be  for  us,  who  can  be  against  us!" 
Or,  verbally,  and  apart  from  the  woven  argument,  here  is 
the  dignity  and  universality  of  the  law  of  labor.  In  a  sys- 
tem where  "  all  things  work,"  the  idler,  whatsoever  else 
he  be,  is  the  moral  pauper  ! 

Or,  higher  yet,  it  declares  the  harmonious  energy,  the 
common  consent,  of  all  that  is  and  moves  under  the  juris- 
diction of  the  Maker.  Force  answers  mind.  Wise  ends  wait 
upon  all  evolution.  Change  knows  no  chance.  In  the  whirl 
of  the  Earth  upon  its  soft  spindles,  all  object  is  obedient. 
In  "  the  ordered  music  of  the  marching  orbs  "  there  is  no 
schism.  The  beauty  and  the  blessing  of  conformity  to 
supreme  law  is  written  upon  atom  and  star.  Only  in  a 
seceded  will  is  there  dissonance  and  pain.  But,  not  tarrying, 
tho  touching  these  wealths  of  duty  and  power,  the  text 
widens  its  wings  for  a  realm  where  parable  and  enigma  are 
translated  into  open  vision.  It  is  not  a  theorem  but  an 
axiom.  It  turns  the  light  of  intuition  upon  all  else.  Query 
and  vicissitude  melt  into  recognition.     JVe  know  ! 

I  single  this  aphorism,  this  total  truth,  and  holding  it  up 
in  its  purity  and  fullness,  luminous  and  lovely,  I  bid  you  see 
how  far  and  revealingly  it  shines.  This  it  declares  —  that 
all  blessing  lies  in  that  relation  to  God  which  we  call  love. 
Intuition  does  not  measure  itself  by  the  three  steps  of  logic. 
It  flies.  It  is  super-rational.  The  conviction  that  God  is 
trustworthy,  that  life,  as  Hugo  says,  "  is  not  a  cul-de-sac, 
but  an  avenue,"  that  the  soul  is  not  a  conundrum,  but  an 
answer,  that  law  is  not  fickle  nor  expectancy  vain,  this  sur- 
rounds and  sustains  the  sciences  which  compass  things  with 
that  nearer  phenomenon  of  the  heart  which  we  call  religion. 
The  only  working  theory  either  of  physics  or  of  prayer  is 
that  which  postulates  a  love  which  cannot  lie.  The  moral 
fidelity  of  God  fits  all  these  curious  and  intricate  locks  of 
object  and  event,  and  cannot  be  accidental.  Fitness  is  par- 
cel to  purpose.  Type  tossed  into  the  air  do  not  fall  into 
a  book  —  not  into  a  primer,  far  less  into  an  organum.     The 


facts  that  so  "  work  together  "  reveal  an  omniscient  and  all- 
controlling  Mind.  Consequence  is  consent.  Only  perversity 
refuses  the  certainty  that  an  intelligent  heart  rules  the 
world.  This  clue  alone  fits  all  these  multiplex  wards.  The 
rule  that  solves  ten  thousand  problems  proves  and  counter- 
proves  its  trustworthiness  by  the  answers.  The  integrity  of 
God  is  a  solvent,  where  all  else  blunders  and  fails.  It  is 
centripetal  thro  all  abysses  and  meets  wonder  with  a  wisdom 
"  forever  telling,  yet  untold  !  " 

It  is  our  birthright  to  read  moral  issues  into  all  that  now 
seems  precarious  and  postponing.  We  are  made  to  expect 
a  crisis  and  culmination  —  a  "  far-off,  divine  event  "  toward 
which,  with  its  distribution  and  its  retribution,  "  the  whole 
creation  moves."  The  groaning  and  travailing  prophesies  a 
"  song  of  deliverance,"  else  were  goodness  a  myth  and  rea- 
son forsworn.  This  is  the  base-line  of  moral  certainty  by 
which  we  measure,  past  the  furrows  of  darkness,  to  the 
coasts  and  crests  of  light.  This  is  the  seership  that  war- 
rants the  apostle.  If  God  loves  and  lives,  if  man  loves,  it 
must  be  !  Between  these  two  pencils,  brought  point  to 
point,  leaps  the  convincing  light.  It  is  the  shechinah.  In 
the  glowing  consent  of  fact  to  purpose  He  is  announced 
whose  "  life  is  the  light  of  men."  Each  ray  shows  a  path  of 
the  shortest  distance,  and  the  first  beam  of  His  dawn  in  the 
soul  is  a  herald  of  the  million-arrowed  noon.  That  little 
child  whom  Christ  ever  sets  in  the  midst  of  our  arguments 
has  learned  nothing  of  the  physics  or  the  chemistry  of  light: 
but,  with  no  theory  of  the  eye,  sees,  and  knows  that  he  sees. 
Why  should  we  quibble  over  the  perceptions  of  our  souls,  or 
tamper  with  the  great  verity  they  corroborate  ?  Let  the 
rapturous  overtones  flood  the  inmost  soul  —  their  music  is 
their  truth  ! 

Impiety  may  scout  subjective  evidence  and  resent  the  love 
it  resists:  but  let  us  rather  refuse  the  insanity  of  faithless- 
ness, which  leaps  the  orbit  where  loving  obedience  answers 
loving  law,  and  let  us  bow  down, — 
70 


"  Like  lily  flower,  that  to  and  fro 
Is  tossed  upon  the  waters  wide, 
Uncaring  for  the  changeful  tide  ; 
Its  root  is  firm  below." 

That  Living  One  Who  from  the  black  ooze  evokes  the  lily, 
will  gauge  the  frail  stem  of  circumstance  that,  unhurt,  all 
white  and  fragrant  hearts  may  float  just  atop. 

So  fuelled  with  human  experience,  but  lit  with  sacred  fire, 
our  text  blazes  in  the  apostle's  hand  like  a  beacon  cresset. 
His  splendid  soul  is  in  its  flame  ! 

"  To  them  that  love  God  all  things  work  together  for 
good."  No  heart-deep  cry  for  deliverance  from  evil  will  be 
unanswered.  In  His  own  time,  but  surely  at  the  last,  God 
will  "  do  good  to  them  that  be  good." 

This  pledge  of  ultimate  succor  sets  out  the  conditions  and 
the  methods  of  the  supreme  blessing.  Question  of  all  ques- 
tions —  Do  you  love  God  ?  Not,  do  you  admire,  respect, 
study:  but,  do  you  love  ?  Opinion  and  action  are  not  final. 
Unless  you  love  Him  He  could  not  bless  you.  The  very  law 
of  love  excludes  the  unloving  !  Not  to  love  is  the  "  law  of 
sin  and  death."  You  baffle  yourself,  and  all  sweet  bells  are 
"  jangled,  out  of  tune  and  harsh."  Harmony  is  the  base  of 
music,  and  music,  too,  is  at  last  love's  parable.  The  infinite 
Yes  stands  over  against  the  "  everlasting  No." 

Now,  for  comparison,  put  in  turn,  by  our  text,  two  other 
views  of  the  meaning  of  human  life  —  philosophies  which, 
while  polar  opposites,  exclude,  each  of  them,  the  spirit's  true 
relation  to  God.  Contradictions  they  are  of  each  other,  but 
contradiction  each  is,  of  free  choice  and  of  accountability, 
with  all  the  gravity  and  grandeur  of  these. 

Optimism  —  Pessimism.  These  tri-syllables,  now  so  much 
popularized  and  even  devitalized,  are  school-terms  for 
theories  which  in  literature  are  as  old  as  the  book  of  Job, 
and  which  in  life  are  answered  by  a  thousand  adages. 

Optimism  declares  that  all  is  for  the  best.  Taken  right- 
eously, it  is  a  majestic  truth.     But  crude  optimism  alleges 

71 


that  "  all  is  for  the  best  "  for  everyone,  and  irrespective  of 
the  individual  right  or  wrong  !  —  that  all  currents  set  to  the 
Hesperides.  In  the  realms  of  a  holy  God  this  raw  opiate  is 
a  most  stupendous  and  stupid  vagary.  Betterment  there 
can  not  be  unless  good  is  the  standard:  but  goodness  and 
goods  are  not  to  be  confused.  Things,  apart  from  the  direc- 
tion of  a  heart-discriminating  God,  are  but  a  basket  of  ser- 
pents twisting  and  sliddering  upon  themselves  ! 

Plain  men  use  few  elaborate  or  analytical  terms:  but  all 
men  think  much  alike,  and  in  colloquial  speach  optimism 
says,  "  Everything  will  come  out  all  right."  It  is  a  specious 
laissez-faire  notion.  Right  will  be  the  victor:  but  only  the 
righteous  will  share  its  victory.  Having  well  dined,  it  is 
easy  to  wash  one's  hands  "  in  imperceptible  water,"  and  to 
set  forth  this  bland  self -leniency :  but  it  is  as  cruel  to 
human  misery  as  it  is  untrue  to  God's  words,  and  the 
wounds  of  life  requite  it  as  an  irony  with  quick,  bleeding 
protests.  That  men  may  drift  up  the  torrent  !  —  that  the 
sharp  thorns  of  disobedience  shall  somehow  bear  the  vintage 
of  the  King  !  —  that,  all  of  themselves,  these  cursed  condi- 
tions shall  become  paradise  !  —  that  the  abnormal  is  to  glide 
into  order,  and  that  sowing  to  the  flesh  is  to  reap  the  fruits 
of  the  Spirit  !  It  proposes  alchemy,  and  is  a  credulity  with- 
out instance  or  guarantee.  No  !  "  The  very  good  figs  and 
the  very  bad  figs  "  are  separated.  Like  yields  like.  What- 
soever a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap  ! " 

Apart  from  the  intervention  of  God  in  Christ,  human 
affairs  are  as  dry  of  consolation  as  the  breasts  of  the  Sphinx. 
The  plaint  is  everywhere :  "  I  am  pained  so  that  I  can  not 
hear.  I  am  dismayed  so  that  I  can  not  see.  My  heart 
panteth.  Horror  hath  affrighted  me.  The  twilight  that  I 
desired  hath  been  turned  into  trembling." 

If  from  things  only,  without  moral  force  or  fulcrum,  we 
have  hope,  we  are  of  all  men  most  miserable  !  No  misan- 
thropy could  devise  worse  than  to  feed  the  heart  with  such 
ashes.  "  A  lie  in  its  right  hand,"  the  sleek  complacency  of 
72 


optimism  ill  suits  this  woful  world,  with  its  delusion  that 
the  crackling  wreck  will  mend  itself  !  Between  font  and 
funeral  there  comes  too  much  that  tasks  and  tortures  the 
soul  of  man  for  him  to  fall  in  with  this  irony.  Love,  as  it 
cries  over  the  cradle  or  the  coffin,  asks  something  more  than 
an  epicurean  formula.  Hunger  can  not  eat  a  bill  of  fare. 
The  soul  wants  better  than  laudanum.  Prayer  (and  all 
men  sometimes  pray,)  petitions  an  intervention  which  this 
clumsy  optimism  disdains.  Progress  in  knowledge  alone  is 
but  more  light  upon  the  interior  of  a  crypt.  An  errant  race 
has  no  "  upward  trend  "  save  when  the  superhuman  Gospel 
heals  its  ways.  The  progress  of  man,  all  by  himself,  is 
quicksand  progress  —  each  struggle  a  worse  entanglement. 
Nothing  gravitates  up  !  Detachment  from  God  is  at  cross- 
purposes  with  all  things.  It  is  under  centrifugal  law.  This 
spurious  and  hypnotizing  theory,  ignoring  the  nature  of  sin, 
bites  off  the  immutable  conditions  of  redemption  and  offers 
no  evidence  for  its  astounding  carte  blanche.  Misery  knows 
that  if  mere  force  is  installed  in  place  of  divine  love  and  in- 
tervention, there  is  left  only  a  universe  of  grinding  cog- 
wheels and  groaning  victims:  for  sin  has  fallen  afoul  of  law, 
and  broken  law  crushes.  Put  a  merely  philosophical  optim- 
ism upon  the  rack  of  fact,  and  she  must  recant  her  perjury 
with  gnashing  teeth  !  O  soul  —  wait  thou  upon  only  God; 
for  thine  expectation  is  from  Him  ! 

Give  the  floor  to  pessimism.  It  holds  this  world  to  be 
superlatively  evil,  the  worst  world  possible,  without  hope 
and  without  God.  Put  to  its  ultimatum,  it  proclaims  life  to 
be  the  supreme  disaster  and  the  dream  of  betterment  or  of 
salvation  to  be  its  chief  curse.  Professing  to  perceive  man 
an  orphan  by  birth,  it  reviles  blessedness  as  an  ideal  that 
can  only  intensify  despair.  Malevolence  is  supreme,  but 
impersonal,  and  therefore  inaccessible  even  to  blasphemy. 
Its  present  is  but  an  artistic  hell,  horizoned  with  cast  iron, 
beauty  but  the  grimace  of  an  elaborate  scheme  of  torture, 
music  a  refined  cruelty,  love  hypocrisy,  and  all  its  men  and 

73 


women  either  fiends  or  fools.  "Who  will  show  us  any 
good  !  "  This  terrific  interpretation  is  not  always  carried  to 
its  conclusions;  but  it  is  not  scarce.  Shakespere  translated 
it  thro  Hamlet: 

"  How  weary,  stale,  flat,  and  unprofitable 
Seem  to  me  all  the  uses  of  this  world." 

And  thro  Macbeth : 

"  Life's  but  a  walking  shadow,  a  poor  player 
That  struts  and  frets  his  hour  upon  the  stage, 
And  then  is  heard  no  more.     It  is  a  tale 
Told  by  an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury, 
Signifying  nothing.'* 

But  mark  that  these  are  the  cries  on  the  one  hand  of  a 
querulous  reason,  on  the  other  of  a  murderous  will. 

Tragedy  is  truer  to  appearance  than  comedy,  and  to  say 
No  hope,  is  more  intelligible  than  to  say,  No  fear  !  But 
while  pessimism  tears  away  the  tissue  garlands  of  optimism, 
it  too  is  both  superficial  and  arbitrary.  It  extinguishes  "the 
candle  of  the  Lord  "  and  then  glares  into  the  surrounding 
dark.  Its  angry  and  acrid  pride  denies  Love's  answer,  and 
then,  self-thwarted,  it  snarls  that  all  things  work  together 
for  evil  !  It  is  the  morbid  and  unmanly  covert  of  an  un- 
submissive will,  and  tantalized  by  its  own  fro  ward  choice 
its  melancholy  is  its  accusation.  The  curious  affinity  of 
these  two  opposite  theories  appears  in  the  readiness  with 
which  epicureanism  embraces  cynicism,  and  credulity  reacts 
into  abject  hate.  Incorrigible  self-seeking  —  "  by  its  means 
defeated  of  its  ends  "  —  turns  finally  to  sneering  suicide  !  If 
there  is  no  loving  and  lifting  God,  then  Swift  and  Byron  and 
Schopenhauer  and  Haeckel  are  sufficient,  and  then  the  pa- 
ganism of  the  later  Locksley  Hall  may  well  usher  in  the  era 
of  lawlessness  with  pandemoniac  yells,  while  all  the  civiliza- 
tion the  affirmation  of  Christ  has  wrought  expires  in  con- 
vulsions whose  dust  darkens  the  Sun  with  sackcloth  !  An 
optimism  that  forgets  God  leads  into  the  hand  of  pessimism, 

74 


and  both  reject  the  planetary  orbit  for  the  cometary  — 
"  wandering  stars,  to  whom  is  reserved  the  blackness  of 
darkness  forever." 

But  for  us  who  believe  in  a  holy  God,  neither  the  pan- 
theistic sadness  of  Buddha  nor  the  unethical  audacity  of 
Mohammed.  Our  text  for  a  lamp,  we  may  be  aware  of  the 
anarchy  of  self,  poppied  or  thorn-set,  base  and  brutal  in 
either  issue.  Love  is  the  third  alternative.  Its  denial  is  the 
strong  delusion.  Our  spirits,  made  to  find  mere  sense  so 
disappointing,  are  the  pledge  of  some  better  things. 

The  very  shadows  of  evil  witness  to  the  brilliant  light. 
The  splendid  grief  is  counterproof  that  husks  and  swine  are 
not  our  proper  portion.  A  world  where  a  cross  utters  love 
is  not  forsaken.     The  Devil  is  not  God. 

Letting  circumstance  exclude  attribute,  one  of  these  ca- 
prices dreams  of  Utopia  and  thinks  Heaven  could  be  no 
better;  the  other  stares  at  pain  and  thinks  Hell  could  be  no 
worse.  But  both  are  partial  and  fallacious,  busy  with  goods 
and  ignoring  good,  or  busy  with  evils  and  forgetting  evil. 
Whether  generalizing  from  a  full  stomach  or  from  a  fierce 
will,  each  finds  its  bane  in  the  idolatry  of  the  present  tense. 
But,  neither  blinding  its  eyes  nor  tearing  off  its  eyelids,  the 
Christian  theory  of  this  world  spans  both  the  depths  and  the 
heights.  It  sees  that  both  fortune  and  misfortune  are  but 
half-truths.  To  that  bar  where  conscious  responsibility 
knows  that  "  it  can,  because  it  ought,"  it  summons  the  as- 
sumptions of  fatalism  and  the  contributory  negligence  of 
indifferentism.  It  meets  misery  with  the  dilemma  of  mercy, 
and  upon  the  canvas  which  philosophy  has  but  primed  it 
sets  the  at  once  darker  and  more  dazzling  revelations  of  guilt 
and  of  grace.  Death  bluntly  interrupts  these  merely  mun- 
dane reasonings,  whether  fanciful  or  frantic;  but  in  this 
abrupt  world,  "  over  whose  acres  walked  those  blessed  feet," 
there  is  at  large  a  more  excellent  answer.  A  song  is  tuned  in 
the  night,  and  our  text,  at  once  pledge  and  plea,  flows  into  that 
matchless  apostrophe, —  "  neither  death  nor  life,  nor  things 

75 


present  nor  things  to  come,  nor  height  nor  depth,  shall  be  able 
to  separate  us  from  the  love  of  God,  which  is  in  Christ!  " 

Christian  truth  admits  the  worst  and  offers  the  best,  and 
discriminating  between  penitence  and  chagrin,  as  also 
between  temerity  and  peace,  it  reconciles  sorrow  and  aspira- 
tion by  the  cross.  There  is  a  great  Deliverer,  Who  consents 
neither  to  credulity  nor  to  incredulity,  neither  to  presump- 
tion nor  to  despair. 

Pessimists  only  as  to  intrinsic  evil,  optimists  only  as  to 
spiritual  good,  we  face  the  wo  which  this  Epistle  to  the 
Romans  considers  at  its  outset,  so  as  to  come  to  the  suffi- 
ciency of  that  faith  which  in  its  eighth  chapter  bursts  every 
barrier  of  space  and  time:  "God  hath  included  all  under 
sin,  that  He  might  have  mercy  upon  all. 

Sciences,  arts,  letters,  laws,  discoveries,  conquests,  battles, 
treaties,  have  not  removed  the  curse  of  human  sin  nor  its 
attendant  pains.  They  have  but  patched  the  old  garment. 
All  politico-social  devices  are  but  temporary  expedients,  and 
in  so  far  as  they  filch  the  conclusions  of  Christianity,  to  the 
neglect  of  its  premises,  they  but  wash  the  old  wallow  and 
gilt  the  dry-rot. 

Truth  and  falsehood  are  compacting,  each  after  its  own 
kind.  The  momentum  of  the  beautiful  and  the  base  steadily 
increases.  Each  has  its  own  axis  of  crystallization.  The 
tares  and  the  wheat  grow  to  the  harvest.  The  turbid  world 
clears  at  the  top,  while  at  the  bottom  the  sediment  gathers 
thicker.  Supernal  and  infernal  forces  more  thoroly  under- 
stand their  antagonisms  and  compact  their  arrays.  "'  The 
morning  cometh  and  also  the  night." 

The  augmenting  scrolls  of  history  are  written  in  moral 
characters,  and  our  text's  truth  is  the  key  to  all  their  cipher. 
Two  sets  of  interpretation  there  are;  for  there  are  two  classes 
of  interpreters:  but  true  love  is  certified  that  nothing  can  be 
permanently  good  for  the  evil,  nor  evil  for  the  good.  No 
perverse  subterfuge,  nor  fear  at  this  present  complexity  can 
delay  the    "  Anathema  "  or  the  "  Maranatha."    These  stand 

76 


over  against  one  another  in   "  the  King's  writing,  which  no 


man  can  reverse." 


It  is  cowardly  to  refuse  the  costs  and  the  conquests  of 
personal  fidelity.  The  cross  of  the  divine  Victor  is  atop  of 
this  grieving  world.  The  great  Samaritan  is  on  his  journey- 
ing. Of  the  Slough  of  Despond  Bunyan  wrote:  "  Even  thro 
the  very  midst  there  are  certain  good  substantial  steps." 
To  the  loving,  "  love  never  faileth."  Its  warm  current  thro 
the  commotions  of  time  can  no  more  be  denied  its  way  than 
storms  can  displace  the  gulf  stream  ! 

Neither  petulance  then,  nor  flatulence.  Christ  can  quell 
the  ravings  of  insane  wills  as  once  He  exorcised  the  maniac 
of  Gadara  and  seated  him  at  His  feet  ! 

If  your  faith  is  in  God's  comprehension  of  you,  not  in 
yours  of  Him,  you  can  surmount  all  menace  and  survive  all 
alarm.  Let  things  flow  or  ebb,  the  chain  will  hold  to  the 
anchor.  The  promises  will  not  ravel.  Sombre  hours,  like 
some  birds  of  dingiest  plumage,  will  burst  into  the  brightest 
carol.  The  harvests  need  the  night  as  well  as  the  day  to 
ripen  them.  It  takes  the  whole  quartet  of  the  seasons  to 
utter  the  fugal  year. 

There  is  a  certain  half -pessimist  (  of  whom  Mrs.  Gum- 
midge  is  a  type,)  who  has  all  the  discomfort  of  the 
practice  without  the  dignity  of  the  philosophy.  He  takes 
the  very  trifles  that  pertain  to  him  with  an  awful  seriousness 
before  which  the  sweet  smile  of  courage  is  daunted.  He 
hopes  for  the  worst  and  enjoys  poor  health  !  He  always 
has  a  sore  spot  and  a  grievance,  and  he  leaks  with  unpleas- 
antness. He  sulks  by  preference  and  kicks  by  anarchic 
instinct.  The  source  of  all  this  biliousness  is  self- preoccupa- 
tion. The  penalty  of  having  no  interests  but  one's  own  is 
moroseness.  Play  will  sometimes  lift  the  mind  out  of  this 
lugubrious  and  inhospitable  frame.  Active  love  for  others 
always  will.  If  religion  is  not  good  to  cure  this  jaundice 
then  it  is  not  good  for  anything.  Honest  hope  should  be  a 
thoro  antiseptic.     Life, —  you  shall  make  it  as  you  take  it. 

77 


"  From  the  self -same  quarter  of  the  sky, 
One  saw  ten  thousand  angels  look  and  smile, 
Another  saw  as  many  demons  frown." 

You  may  regard  the  pool  of  water  at  your  feet  as  a  muddy 
obstruction,  or  you  may  look  into  it,  as  into  a  Claude  Lor- 
raine glass,  and  behold  the  reflected  stars. 

"  Some  murmur,  when  their  sky  is  clear 

And  wholly  bright  to  view, 
If  one  small  speck  of  dark  appears 

In  their  great  heaven  of  blue. 
And  some  with  thankful  love  are  filled 

If  but  one  streak  of  light, 
One  ray  of  God's  good  mercy,  gild 

The  darkness  of  their  night." 

Look  where  the  light  looks  and  you  will  see  rainbows  !  A 
close  grip  upon  our  text  will  carry  you  thro  a  myriad  inci- 
dental dissatisfactions.  Not  too  sanguine  or  too  anxious, 
neither  idle  nor  nervous,  but  always  modestly  brave,  you 
shall  find  that  (  even  when  tempted  to  say,  with  Jacob,  "  All 
these  things  are  against  me,"  )  the  very  thorns  weave  into  a 
crown,  and  that  the  pillow  of  stones  is  the  foot  of  a  ladder  ! 

"  In  the  sweat  of  thy  brow  thou  shalt  eat  bread."  God 
has  you  upon  his  lathe  to  make  something  of  you.  If  you 
meet  His  love  with  your  own,  He  covenants  for  you  with  the 
beasts  of  the  field;  the  stones  shall  be  in  league  with  you; 
all  laws  shall  further  you ;  the  stars  shall  fight  for  you ;  for 
He  Who  "  telle th  the  number  of  the  stars  "  is  He  Who 
"  healeth  the  broken  in  heart  and  bindeth  up  their  wounds." 

You  cannot  look  behind,  nor  about,  nor  within,  nor 
above,  and  think  that  the  compensations  of  the  All-true  are 
either  unmoral  or  insecure.  This  whole  world,  the  instinct 
of  faith,  the  insight  of  obedience,  all  the  intimations  of  im- 
mortality, join  in  this  unison:  "To  them  that  love  God  all 
things  work  together  for  good."  Love  is  royal  and  indomit- 
able. Gideon's  fleece  and  the  dream  of  the  tumbling  cake 
of  barley-bread  have  still  an  oracle. 
78 


Consider  the  parable  of  that  "  king  of  instruments," 
the  organ.  Perceive  there  the  common  consent  of  dis- 
tinct laws,  hydraulic,  dynamic,  acoustic,  their  co-ordinate 
functions  not  confused,  but  all  subordinated  to  the  higher 
law  of  music.  They  all  "  work  together,"  combining  in 
a  unity  which  is  "  perfected  by  that  which  every  joint  sup- 
plied.'' 

But  here  again  the  whole  is  greater  than  the  sum  of  its 
visible  parts.  The  intent  is  more  than  the  contents.  As 
mechanism  alone,  it  stands  unvocal,  dumb.  Its  adaptation 
yields  no  tone.  The  organ  cannot  play  itself  !  Its  sound- 
letters  may  make  chords,  its  chords  weave  into  the  syntax 
of  phrases,  its  periods  and  rhythms  build  into  poems,  lyric, 
dramatic,  epic:  but  all  this  in  not  in  the  organ,  but  in  the 
soul  of  the  player.  It  is  but  instrumental  to  him,  and  no 
accident  can  ever  waken  a  symphony  from  that  impersonal 
metal  and  silent  wood.  But  all  in  the  twilight  you  listen 
while  an  unseen  organist  presses  the  keys  and  gathers  pedals 
and  stops  to  work  his  thought.  Your  heart  feels  and 
answers  and  you  know  that,  invisible  to  you,  one  is  there 
whose  life,  thro  a  common  but  ineffable  language,  reveals 
yourself  and  him  ! 

What  harmonies  the  Master  of  sound  and  meaning 
awakens  !  How  all  secondary  laws  contribute  to  the 
"  hidden  soul "  of  music  !  It  is  pathetic,  sublime,  and 
thro  all  the  melted  approaches,  welding  the  counterpoint 
and  subduing  the  devious  modulations,  you  catch  the  imma- 
nent theme  —  broadening,  increasing  in  purpose  and  depth, 
waxing  to  the  great  burst  of  trumpets  and  open  diapasons. 
It  is  the  Messiah  !  A  greater  than  Handel  is  here.  Wait, 
heirs  of  salvation,  you  shall  yet  join  that  "  Hallelujah 
Chorus."  In  mighty  arcs,  Eden  and  Babel  and  Egypt 
and  Sinai  and  Canaan  and  Babylon  and  Bethlehem 
and  Gethsemane  and  Calvary  and  Olivet  —  and  all  thro 
which  love  has  wrought,  "  shall  meet  with  joy  in  sweet 
Jerusalem  ! " 

79 


Men  of  the  Class  of  '98: 

You  are  about  to  join  that  procession  of  graduates  which 
began  here  when  this  old  century  was  young.  The  honest 
traditions  of  this  school  of  men  are  all  yours.  You  are 
theirs.  All  hours  have  high  values  that  realize  the  heart. 
This  hour  has  such  values.  The  year  that  has  seen  the  old 
Sixth  Massachusetts  go  thro  Baltimore,  not  as  it  went  that 
19th  of  April,  1861,  that  has  heard  the  northern  hurrah 
greet  the  southern  yell,  with  one  united  purpose  for  the  cause 
of  freedom  and  under  the  starlight  of  the  flag  of  the  morn- 
ing —  this  is  no  year  for  doubtful,  but  for  daring,  men. 
God's  truth  is  always  at  war  with  some  Spain.  Maleficent 
strategems  will,  your  lives  long,  summon  you  to  resist  and 
reduce  them.  I  have  sought  to  turn  you  away  from  an 
unscientific  and  an  ungodly  despondency,  and  I  am  sorry  to 
make  an  end.  I  commit  you  and  your  ways  to  Samuel 
Kirkland's  God. 

"  I  hold 
That  it  becomes  no  man  to  nurse  despair : 
But  in  the  teeth  of  clenched  antagonisms 
To  follow  up  the  worthiest,  till  he  die." 

Every  one  of  you,  whatever  he  has  misdone  so  far,  stands  yet 
for  a  splendid  possibility.  Heed  no  clabber  of  words.  Stand 
in  with  the  constructors,  not  the  censors.  Instead  of  pulling 
back  the  freight  of  the  years,  push  it  along  !     Gott  mil  uns  ! 

"  Brother  !  sing  a  loud  psalm; 
Our  hope's  not  forlorn; 

After  darkness  and  twilight  breaks  forth  the  new  morn  ! 
Let  the  mad  foe  grow  madder, 
Never  quail  !     Up  the  ladder  ! 
Grasp  the  sword  of  the  Lord  and  forward  !  " 

You  will  come  back  and  whisper  in  her  ear,  up  on  yonder 
hill,  the  "  open  sesame  "  of  memory,  and  the  names  of  those 
who  one  by  one  can  come  back  no  more,  and  then,  God 
grant  it  to  you  all,  there  shall  be  another  class  day,  in  the 
land  where  it  is  always  June  ! 

80 


THE  STATION  OF  OBEDIENCE 

TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS,  JUNE  25,  1899 

Go  thou  thy  way  till  the  end  be;  for  thou  shalt  rest  and  stand  in  thy  lot  at  the  end 
of  thy  days.     Daniel  7 :13. 

For  nearly  eighty  years  Daniel  was  prime  minister  of  that 
Chaldean  monarchy  which  in  his  prophetic  vision  was  the 
golden  head,  whereof  Babylon,  magnificent  with  the  spoils 
of  subjugated  peoples,  was  the  surpassing  crown.  Upon  that 
capital  long  ago  the  word  of  Isaiah  was  precisely  fulfilled: 
"  The  golden  city  has  ceased."  The  "  beauty  of  pride  "  is 
overthrown.  Over  her  "  perpetual  desolations  "  twenty-five 
centuries  have  trailed,  and  palace  and  battlement,  warrior 
and  sword,  wizard  and  king,  crumble  in  common  dust. 

Of  all  that  pomp  and  power,  only  the  name  lives  now  —  a 
seal  of  the  severity  of  God  and  a  synonym  of  self-destruc- 
tive iniquity,  a  name  that  is  an  appropriate  epitaph  for  any 
city  or  people  that  seeks  but  self.  Babylon's  very  shame  is 
chiefly  memorable  for  her  place  in  Hebrew  prophecy  and  for 
her  association  with  him  who,  tho  her  counsellor,  was  the 
liegeman  of  the  one  untarnishable  crown  and  of  the  only 
sceptre  that  shall  never  fall.  These  twelve  chapters  are  a 
book  of  obediences,  beginning  with  the  story  of  those  sturdy 
youths  who,  far  from  home,  were  true  to  their  upbringing 
and  would  not  defile  themselves  with  the  idol-blessed  meat 
and  wine. 

Of  these  four,  to  Daniel  God  gave  especial  wisdom,  "  more 
than  all  the  magicians  and  astrologers  in  the  realm."  He 
"  found  favor  and  tender  love  "  from  the  king's  steward;  but 
he  was  a  "  man  greatly  beloved  "  of  God.  He  was  the  John 
of  the  Old  Testament  and  Babylon  was  his  Patmos,  where 
God  unrolled  for  his  recording  the  divine  map  of  time,  its 
rising  and  sinking  empires,  His  exact  advent  Who  should 
"  take   the  dominion  under  the  whole  heaven  " —  and  the 

81 


ages  to  be,  on  till  "  the  time  of  the  end.*'  The  panorama 
he  could  not  comprehend,  and  of  his  tutor-angel  he  seeks 
the  issue  —  "  searching  what  or  what  manner  of  time  the 
Spirit  did  point  unto "  —  the  suffering,  the  glory.  But 
"  not  unto  themselves  did  they  minister  these  things." 
Even  a  Daniel  must  wait.  Philosophical  curiosity  is  not 
met.  As  God's  scribe  he  must  write  and  seal  the  book. 
The  pledged  fulfilment  is  but  sketched  —  Providence  must 
write  in  the  commentary  of  fact.  He,  too,  saw  but  "  in  a 
mirror,  enigmatically."  The  perspective  and  vista  is  clouded 
even  to  the  prophet.  He  cannot  understand  all  mysteries. 
The  lantern  is  not  the  day.  The  fidelity  is  more  than  pre- 
science. Here,  too,  all  our  queries  find  at  once  their  solace 
and  rebuke.  "  After  long  grief  and  pain  "  our  bewilderment 
asks:  "  What  shall  be  the  end  ?  "  and  still  the  heavenly  an- 
swer is:  "Go  thou  thy  way."  So  once  the  disciples  — 
"  Tell  us  when  shall  these  things  be  ?  "  and  so  say  we,  too 
often,  only  to  hear  that  wise  refusal  —  "It  is  not  for  you  to 
know  the  times  and  the  seasons  which  the  Father  hath  hid 
in  His  own  power." 

The  impenetrability  of  the  future  is  of  grace.  The  dis- 
count of  our  bains  and  successes  would  foil  their  disciplines. 
Amid  ten  thousand  uncertainties  of  our  forecast,  our  Guard- 
ian's voice  and  presence  is  better  than  knowledge. 

There  is  no  confusion  in  His  plan,  nor  delay  in  His  per- 
formance. He  does  not  deviate  or  halt.  Every  atom  and 
act,  every  being  and  event,  in  that  section  of  eternity 
which  we  call  time,  has  its  appointed  way  and  lot.  Crea- 
tion was  not  launched  in  vain:  it  is  no  splintered  derelict, 
adrift  upon  the  waves  dappled  by  a  dying  moon.  All  worlds 
and  wills  are  helio-centric,  and  what  we  think  inscrutable 
works  out  the  expected  end.  Largest  or  least,  everywhere 
loyal  order  answers  royal  mandate.  He  "  metes  out  the 
heavens  with  a  span  "  and  guides  every  fleck  of  vapor  that 
floats  in  those  depths.  The  breeze  is  His  barge  and  the  tor- 
nados are  His  chariot.    "  He  sends  forth  the  snow  like  wool  " 

82 


and  places  each  hesitating  flake.  He  plants  the  forests  and 
unrolls  their  every  leaf.  He  overrules  the  empires  and  the 
transmigrations  of  men,  and  the  "very  hairs  of  their  heads  are 
all  numbered."  "  He  hath  measured  the  waters  in  the  hollow 
of  His  hand."  The  perpetual  surfs  break  upon  lonely 
coasts;  but  each  drop  goes  its  own  way,  and  every  grain  of 
the  rearranging  sands  maintains  the  equilibrium  of  the 
great  globe. 

Enumeration  pants  before  the  lavishment  and  wonder  of 
form  and  force.  Law,  infinite  and  infinitesimal  !  Change 
everywhere,  nowhere  chance  !  Comparison  is  swallowed  up 
of  awe  before  Him  Who  counts  the  nations  as  a  "  drop  in 
the  bucket,"  and  "  taketh  up  the  isles  as  a  very  little  thing." 

Weights  and  measures  drop  from  our  hands  as  microscope 
answers  telescope,  from  either  lens  deep  calling  unto  deep  in 
an  antiphon  of  worship,  while  the  shechinah  glows  between 
inmost  and  outmost  creation.  High  vision  only  multiplies 
the  inexhaustible.  Stare  with  forty-inch  eye  into  the  stellar 
abysses,  conquer  more  worlds,  till  science,  forspent,  weeps, 
there  every  sun  and  system  goes  its  several  way.  The 
boundless  void  is  full  with  a  Presence  !  The  comets  that 
trail  their  golden  fleece  thro  the  sheer  depths  finity  can 
never  dredge,  are  no  runaways  !  He  shepherds  those  flocks, 
and  hangs  the  gems,  trembling  from  His  touch,  as  the  lamps 
of  His  palace.  From  monad  to  nebula,  no  system  is  too 
great  or  satellite  too  small  to  be  unheeded  in  the  balance  of 
obedience.  But  the  realm  of  conscious  intelligence  is  higher, 
deeper.  Mind  is  the  occupant.  Being  is  the  most  amaz- 
ing. These  are  the  mansions  of  the  Father  of  Spirit.  The 
archangelic  serenity  of  freedom  and  peace  is  there.  Into 
that  heaven  of  obedience  where  privilege  and  duty  are 
one,  man  with  his  birthright  of  personality  may  also 
come.  Of  all  the  circles  of  life  God  is  the  final  centre. 
There  is  that  about  this  little  star  that  makes  it  "  first  in 
night's  diadem."  Where  love  is  the  warden  there  can  be  no 
collisions.     One  seraph  stands  as  a  page  close  to  the  white 

83 


throne,  one  speeds  as  a  messenger  to  some  far  world.  One 
sentinels  a  city,  and  one  carries  a  beggar  to  Abraham's 
bosom.  But  each,  joyful  in  his  assignment,  knows  that 
fidelity  is  glory.  Gabriel,  if  God  said  so,  would  count  it  as 
worthy  to  watch  the  bed  of  a  believing  leper  as  to  marshal 
in  burning  row  the  sunny  legion  of  seraphim  ! 

The  lesson  is  as  personal  to  us  as  it  is  boundless.  It  is 
strong  and  saline.  As  among  the  armies  of  Heaven,  so  for 
every  inhabitant  of  Earth  —  "  Go  thy  way  to  the  end  "  is 
the  will  of  God. 

Prophet  or  child,  there  is  no  less  nor  more.  "  One  after 
this  manner  and  another  after  that."  Each  of  you  has  a 
path  to  which  your  Maker  points  no  other  feet.  In  life,  as 
in  an  orchestra,  "  there  are  many  kinds  of  voices  and  none 
of  them  is  without  signification."  Each  task  and  trial  is 
enough  and  not  more,  with  grace  sufficient  and  none  to 
spare.  The  patient  teacher  does  not  turn  a  new  leaf  until 
the  first  is  mastered,  tho  it  be  dogs-eared  and  tear-stained. 

"  My  bark  is  wafted  to  the  strand 
By  breath  divine — 
And  on  the  helm  there  rests  a  hand 
Other  than  mine. 

One  who  has  known  in  storms  to  sail 

I  have  on  board; 
Above  the  raging  of  the  gale 

I  hear  the  Lord. 

He  holds  me  when  the  billows  smite — 

I  shall  not  fall. 
If  sharp  'tis  short,  if  long  'tis  light; 

He  tempers  all." 

Our  lot  may  seem  a  chance;  but  its  disposing  is  with  Him, 
and  to  envy  another's  opportunity  or  to  criticise  our  own 
is  to  set  up  that  lie  of  self-autonomy  which  interprets 
honor  by  condition.  He  who  appoints  our  ways  knows  our 
best  good,  and  what  seems  the  barrenest  spot  in  our  lives, 
under  the  irrigation  of  tears  may  bloom  with  more  than 
May  and  bear  the  peaceable  fruits  of  righteousness.     The 

84 


alluvial  years  witness  strange  issues.  God's  motherliness 
does  not  indulge  the  whims  that  endanger  character,  grant- 
ing all  the  candy  we  cry  for,  and  with  medicine  that  is  often 
bitter  to  take  He  cures  the  aches  brought  on  by  our  self-in- 
dulgences. It  is  displacement  from  God's  way  that  makes 
all  the  petulant  confusion  of  this  strange  Earth.  In  man's 
caprice  alone,  amid  the  full  concords  of  Nature,  is  struck  a 
tuneless  and  jarring  note.  Resenting  his  environment  and 
inverting  his  dependency,  all  his  bitter  heart-burnings  come 
from  his  wayward  will.  The  coronation  of  desire  brings  in 
the  whole  train  of  distresses.  Passion  forfeits  peace.  To 
"  go  our  ways  "  reverently  and  "  stand  in  our  lot  "  weaves  all 
life,  and  that  in  silver  woof,  upon  a  warp  of  gold.  This  is 
the  love  that  never  faileth.  It  gives  initiative  and  evolves 
persistency.  The  full  acceptance  of  God's  control  makes 
endurance  an  active  virtue.  It  is  the  pull  of  the  wires  upon 
a  piano  frame,  their  resistance  to  high  strain,  that  holds 
them  to  their  music.  Eagerly,  wistfully,  we  seek  to  surpass 
our  limitations;  but  God  does  not  disclose  the  event.  Better 
than  that,  He  secures  it.  He  steers  the  ship,  and  it  shall 
clear  the  foggy  channel,  for  all  the  reefs.  He  who  sets  our 
tasks  will  not  forget  the  love  that  accepted,  and  the  labor 
that  to  level  of  its  best  attempted  them.  Thus  we  learn. 
Life  gives  us  certain  exercises  with  "figured  bass";  but 
when  by  such  helps  we  master  something  of  harmony,  and 
deeper  yet,  something  of  the  principles  of  form,  we  can  man- 
age chords,  progressions  and  resolutions  over  whose  elusive 
intricacy  we  once  could  have  cried!  No  function  is  second- 
ary to  the  spirit  of  obedience.  The  gun-deck  is  as  noble  as 
the  quarter-deck.  It  was  not  only  the  men  in  the  turrets, 
but  the  men  at  the  engines,  that  cleared  the  sea  at  Santiago, 
and  back  of  them  the  builders  and  machinists  who  had  set 
every  bolt  and  pinion  in  its  place,  and  hammered  true  each 
rivet  that  held  tight  the  iron  lips  of  the  boilers. 

It  is  obstinate  fidelity  in  minor  duties  —  in  the  "  one  hour 
subjects  "  —  that  graduates  "  high  honor  "  at  the  last.    This 

85 


surmounts  the  temptation  of  the  sallow  and  surly  moods, 
and  all  the  mongrel  theories  of  diluted  epicureanism,  the 
violence  of  a  greedy  will,  and  the  torpor  of  a  false  modesty. 

The  pigments,  umber  and  amber,  splotched  upon  the 
palette,  have  that  in  them  that  mastery  can  use  to  paint 
Madonnas.  Out  of  the  rough  quarry-block  Thorwaldsens 
can  chisel  immortal  form.  And  life  is  to  every  one  of  us 
but  the  pedestal,  the  canvas,  where  the  soul  may  —  must  — 
somehow  utter  its  ideal,  be  that  Fra  Angelico's  angel  or 
Bougereau's  satyr.  Ah,  that  we  may  not  talk  Corregio  and 
live  chromo  !  For  it  is  by  reality,  not  by  poising  and  pos- 
turing, that  character  becomes  statuesque.  Conscience 
toward  the  unseen  and  eternal  drives  away  the  attitudes  of 
self- consciousness. 

It  was  a  whole  result  of  truth  in  genius,  when  Phidias  re- 
plied to  one  who  chid  his  pains  over  a  part  of  his  work 
always  to  remain  unviewed:  "The  gods  see  and  must  be 
satisfied."  Few  things  rescued  from  the  flux  of  the  ages 
have  a  nobler  pathos  than  the  form  of  that  sentinel  who 
stood  to  his  post  in  Pompeii  while  the  ashes  fell  !     Duty  ! 

"  As  the  bird  trims  her  to  the  gale, 

I  trim  myself  to  the  storm  of  time, 
I  man  the  rudder,  reef  the  sail, 

Obey  the  voice  at  eve  obeyed  at  prime : 
'Lowly  faithful,  banish  fear, 

Right  onward  drive  unharmed; 
The  port,  well  worth  the  cruise,  is  near, 

And  every  wave  is  charmed.'  " 

The  man  after  God's  heart  is  the  man  who  minds.  There 
is  nothing  archaic  and  cryptic  about  Daniel  as  an  instance. 
He,  and  every  like  soul,  "  rests  and  stands  in  his  lot  at  the 
end."  There  is  a  grander  pantheon  than  Westminster.  By 
a  sublime  conservation  of  energy  what  has  been  truly  good 
is  unwastingly  great.  It  may  escape  history,  but  it  works 
on  in  the  chemistry  of  time.  Its  ozone  continues.  We  are 
sharing  the  momentum  and  entering  into  the  labors  of  those 

86 


who  saved  past  epochs  from  decay.  We  are  mainly  the  lega- 
tees, not  of  the  famous  few,  but  of  the  anonymous  myriads 
who  have  piled  up  the  coral  island  from  beneath  the  sea,  and 
who  in  the  dark  wrought  with  a  perpendicular  instinct. 

The  "  mute  Miltons  "  are  not  inglorious — they  are  part 
of  the  organ  whose  music  is  not  yet  opened. 

"  Ah,  if  our  souls  but  poise  and  swing, 
Like  the  compass  in  its  brazen  ring, 
Ever  level  and  ever  true 
To  the  toil  and  the  task  we  have  to  do, 
We  shall  sail  securely,  and  safely  reach 
The  Fortunate  Isles,  on  whose  shining  beach 
The  sights  we  see  and  the  sounds  we  hear 
Will  be  those  of  joy  and  not  of  fear." 

It  is  not  canonization  that  is  great,  but  saintship,  and  that 
which  makes  it  is  the  daily  syntax  and  maturing  idiom  of 
docility  toward  the  God  Who  owns  us  all.  It  is  a  rough 
path  may  be,  but  it  is  well  blazed  by  sharp  axes.  Doubt- 
less Moses  wondered  why  he  was  called  to  spend  forty  years 
out  of  the  centre  of  his  life  as  an  Arabian  shepherd  !  For 
this  had  he  mastered  Egyptian  lore  ?  Must  he  thus  wait 
while  Israel  grovelled  under  taskmasters  and  acquired  the 
slavish  mind  ?  Yes,  in  Midian,  even  Moses,  and  because 
Moses,  must  find  the  school  where  in  his  one  life  was  pre- 
paring the  emancipation  of  a  people,  where  in  meditative 
and  germinal  years  the  lawgiver  of  ages  was  himself  master- 
ing submission. 

Oh,  how  fully,  upon  life  after  life,  is  our  text  illuminated! 
Which  of  you  would  have  elected  the  disciplines  of  Bedford 
jail  ?  Yet  there  was  one  who,  persecuted  and  silenced, 
made  that  "  den "  the  House  of  Interpreter,  —  a  Beulah 
mountain.  That  which  there  he  wrought  made  it  a  more 
notable  dwelling  than  Lambeth  palace.  Which  of  you  can 
tell,  or  cares  that  he  cannot  tell,  who  was  just  then  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  ?  One  John  Bunyan  has  outweighed 
all  the  primates  England  ever  had  ! 

87 


Coarse  cradles  and  rough  tutoring  oftenest  shelter  and 
train  the  most  effective  personalities. 

How  then  dare  you,  dare  I,  so  plunder  the  future  as  to 
renounce  responsibility  to  God's  control  of  us  ?  Your  life 
whirls  on  into  unknown  distances,  you  can  see  the  landscape 
but  sidewise,  but  the  eye  of  the  Engineer  looks  right  on, 
whether  you  sleep  or  wake.  Shall  ignorance  meddle 
with  the  intricate  mechanism,  shall  madness  change  the 
switches  in  the  night  ?  What  do  we  know  of  the  complex 
bearings  of  one  day,  how  much  less  can  we  foresee  the  lead- 
ings of  a  lifetime  !  He  who  lights  all  that  chandelier  of 
stars,  listens  to  and  loves  to  answer  the  child's  petition 
that  well  becomes  us  all:  "I  pray  Thee,  Lord,  my  soul 
to  keep." 

"  Far  better  in  its  place  the  lowliest  bird 

Should  sing  aright  to  Him  the  lowliest  song, 
Than  that  a  seraph  strayed  should  take  the  word, 
And  sing  His  glory  wrong." 

"  Blessed  is  he  that  waiteth  and  cometh  to  the  end."  It 
is  a  busy,  beautiful  world,  and  good  to  live  in.  God's  con- 
trol makes  the  living  lovely,  the  good- night  peaceful,  the 
waking  blessed. 

O  Thou  Ancient  of  Days,  send  out  Thy  light  and  truth 
to  lead  us  all  !  Let  not  one  of  our  souls  be  cast  down  or 
disquieted  because  we  do  not  now  know  all  that  Thou  doest. 
We  shall  know  hereafter  and  be  satisfied  when  we  awake  in 
Thy  likeness.  While  many  run  to  and  fro  and  knowledge  is 
increased,  may  we  begin  our  wisdom  in  Thy  fear  and  crown 
it  with  Thy  favor.  Increase  our  faith.  Curb  our  impatient 
wills.  Sustain  our  needy  hearts.  Plant  us  by  the  rivers 
that  make  glad  the  city  of  God.  For  Thy  name's  sake  order 
our  lot  and  guide  our  growth  in  it,  today,  tomorrow,  and 
forever  more  !     Amen. 

Men  of  the  Class  of  '99 : 

To  you  have  I  said   thus   much   already,   and   yet  closer 

88 


would  I  come  to  you  in  a  few  words  more.  Forty-five  of 
you  arrive  at  the  line.  But  two  larger,  and  they  but  slightly 
larger,  classes  have  graduated  here.  You  have  had  upon 
your  roll  in  all  sixty-five  names,  six  you  have  inherited  from 
earlier  classes,  eight  you  have  bequeathed  to  classes  still  in 
College.  One,  Hildreth,  whom  you  loved,  has  finished  his 
mortal  work  and  "  passed  to  where  beyond  these  voices 
there  is  peace." 

Your  record  is  one  of  work,  of  good- will,  and  of  excep- 
tional scholarly  average.  You  have  been  faithful  to  the 
standards  that  keep  manhood  clean  and  honor  bright. 

Your  instructors  hold  you  as  friends  and  believe  you  hold 
them  such.  We  are  sure  you  will  be  working-bees,  not 
drones,  in  the  great  hive  of  human  life,  not  men  of  flighty 
impulse,  but  as  steady  to  your  task  as  the  hour-hand  of  the 
clock.     We  believe  in  you. 

Do  you  remember  that  1799  was  the  date  when  the  first 
recitations  were  held  on  our  old  hill  ? 

It  was  a  hundred  years  ago, 

Upon  the  crest  that  crowns  the  slope, 
They  did  what  they  could  never  know 

Who  opened  there  the  doors  of  hope. 

Scholar  and  soldier,  man  and  saint, 

Our  Kirkland  made  what  naught  could  move, 

And  from  that  cradle  rude  and  quaint 
Has  grown  the  Hamilton  we  love. 

It  was  a  day  of  little  things, 

And  poverty  and  doubt  were  near, 
And  tho  his  prayers  had  sturdy  wings 

He  could  not  guess  the  hundredth  year. 

He  struck  the  plow  in  fallow  soil, 

He  sowed  the  seed  with  open  hand, 
The  God  of  Wisdom  owned  his  toil, 

And  where  he  wrought  and  sleeps  we  stand. 

And  still  shall  stand  when  we  are  gone 

The  widening  walls  and  ampler  task, 
And  the  good  College  shall  live  on 

With  more  than  we  can  think  or  ask. 


Thou  God  Whose  mercies  never  cease, 

While  runs  a  second  century, 
Let  our  high  beacon  towers  increase; 

We  trust  their  lamps  of  truth  to  Thee. 

The  College  has  stood,  and  stands,  and  will  stand,  firm  as 
the  integrity  of  these  primeval  hills,  upon  her  face  the  vision 
of  perpetual  morning  and  all  the  sunsets  at  her  back.  The 
Observatory  shall  again  search  the  stars,  and  the  Chapel 
spire  shall  ever  point  beyond  them.  The  sciences  of  sense 
and  of  the  soul  shall  walk  hand  in  hand  thro  the  long  to- 
morrow. The  trees  will  grow,  noble  buildings  rise,  the 
campus  hum  with  increasing  life,  but  to  the  last  it  will  be 
your  own  —  your  mother's  fireside.  The  iron  tongue  of  the 
bell  shall  ring  golden  notes  of  welcome.  Changes  shall  be 
evolutions,  not  revolutions  —  growths,  not  decays. 

Tune  your  hearts  to  the  old  key  once  more  before  you  go 
—  that  loyal  gratitude,  in  which  you  in  your  time,  shall  tell 
the  fame  and  promote  the  advancement  of  your  College. 
There  will  be  an  echo  in  the  mellow  air,  room  at  the  table, 
always  and  only  yours.  The  place  with  all  its  paths,  its 
romance  of  your  youth,  will  be  a  goodly  tryst  long  after  the 
voices  of  the  Faculty  you  knew  are  heard  no  more. 

We  take  your  hands  hard.  Go  your  way,  and  at  the  end 
of  all  the  days  stand  in  your  lot.  For  He  said  it  for  you 
also,  —  "I  am  the  way,  and  the  truth,  and  the  life." 


90 


THE  BETTER  WAY 

TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS,  JUNE  24,  1900 

/  pray  not  that  Thou  shouldst  take  them  from  the  world  :  but  that  Thou  shouldst 
keep  them  from  the  evil.     John  17:15. 

These  immediate  chapters  of  the  fourth  gospel  are,  of  all 
places  in  the  New  Testament,  those  in  which  we  come  clos- 
est to  the  Messiah. 

Here,  hiding  as  "  in  a  pavilion  from  the  strife  of  tongues," 
the  heart  can  hear  itself  listen.  Sophism  and  doubt  are 
silenced  and  answered,  before  this  most  divine  and  most 
human  revealing  of  a  Saviour's  soul. 

Here  Love  finds  its  utmost  speech  and  takes  that  eleven, 
and  all  who  will  go  with  them,  into  its  innermost  confidence. 

In  this  sublime  intercession  we  overhear  the  very  mind  of 
Love  itself,  and  vital  and  perpetual  things,  ennobling  and 
surpassing  language,  are  told  so  plain  that  words  can  never 
increase  them.  This  mediatorial  prayer  not  only  goes  to 
the  quick  of  motive  and  feeling,  it  not  only  brims  with  per- 
sonal and  passionate  affection,  it  also  sketches  the  whole 
character  and  purpose  of  those  who  are  to  become  the  rep- 
resentatives and  messengers  of  their  Master  —  gives  their 
errand,  their  secret  of  power,  their  antagonisms  and  perils, 
their  pains,  their  peace. 

The  word  "  world  "  is  deeply  instructive  in  its  iteration 
thro  fourteen  clauses.  Indeed,  we  have  to  go  carefully  not 
to  lose  its  force.  The  teaching  as  to  the  "  world  "  (ampli- 
fied in  John's  first  letter )  prompts  us  to  distinguish  the 
varied  sense  it  has  thro  all  the  Testament. 

Here  it  has  mainly  the  special  sense  of  denoting  the  gen- 
eral multitude  of  men,  with  their  sphere  and  aims,  as  apart 
from  those  who  are  chosen  into  and  who  choose  utterly  the 
faithful  fellowship  of  Christ  as  their  Lord  and  Life. 

And  this  petition  is  permanent  in  individualizing  and  col- 

91 


lecting  all  those,  everywhere  and  always,  who  are  the  suc- 
cessors in  the  faith  of  that  little  company  of  followers.  For 
them,  severally  and  all  together,  its  every  accent  and  term. 

I  speak  now  in  hope  that  no  man  of  this  company  would 
forfeit  his  possible  share  in  a  Redeemer's  invocation,  nor 
undo  by  one  iota  its  blessed  bond.  For  you,  or  not  for  you, 
as  you  decide  it,  this  prayer  endures. 

We  may  be  sure  that  such  a  supplication  omits  nothing 
necessary  and  includes  nothing  unimportant.  What  the  Son 
of  Man  sought,  for  all  who  will  to  be  His,  contains  the 
abundant  legacy  of  manhood. 

And  our  text  carries  us  to  the  very  centre.  Superiority, 
and  not  isolation.  Use,  without  abuse.  The  highest  life, 
lived  tranquilly  and  bravely  amid  strenuous  conditions.  All 
terrestrial  things  interpreted  by  celestial  ends.  In  the  world 
and  not  of  it  ! 

Not  absenteeism  but  transcendence,  neither  abstraction 
nor  distraction.  This  was  Christ's  own  way,  and  by  those 
who  would  have  all  or  none  of  Earth  He  was  equally  mis- 
understood and  misclassified.  The  task  and  the  joy,  the 
rejection  and  the  victory,  go  together,  and  the  equation  of 
loyalty  to  His  way  must  have  all  its  terms  complete. 

Not  common  forms  but  common  motives,  not  identical 
circumstances  but  unity  in  character,  is  what  creates  the 
sympathy  and  the  alliance  between  those  who  surpass  the 
superficial  substitute  of  uniformity,  in  true  unity  of  the 
spirit. 

Christ's  own  mind  and  method  toward  all  visible  and 
social  surroundings,  is  what  substantially  joins  all  who  are 
truly  His.     This  is  the  bond  of  their  peace. 

This  great  request  in  our  behalf  cogently  teaches  that 
the  super-mundane  life  is  not  yet  the  extra-mundane  —  that 
it  is  not  maintained  by  a  thought  exterior  to  its  condition- 
ings of  sense  and  sin,  but  superior  to  these.  Waywardness 
and  outwardness  are  to  be  surmounted  by  inwardness. 

Surrender  and  sin  lie  not  in   surroundings  but  in  contami- 


nation.  We  can  squeeze  it  right  to  this,  —  not  taken  but 
kept  I 

"  All  its  pleasures  and  its  griefs, 
All  its  shallows  and  rocky  reefs, 
All  the  secret  currents,  that  flow 
With  such  resistless  undertow, 
And  lift  and  drift  with  terrible  force 
The  will  from  its  moorings  and  its  course. " 

When  we  meditate  these  dangers  of  the  wide  sea  it  seems 
easier  not  to  venture.  It  is  easier.  But  smooth  roads 
make  small  men.  Temporarily  it  is  safer  to  avoid  risks; 
but  temporizing  is  the  tune  of  feebleness.  Monasticism 
gives  up  the  fight  in  preferring  seclusion  to  exclusion.  An 
honest  and  brave  manhood  does  not  let  that  contemplation 
supersede  action  which  rather  should  stimulate  it.  That 
"  fugitive  and  cloistered  virtue  "  failed  of  the  very  purity 
which  it  idealized  — failed  because  it  fled  the  war. 

I  suppose  we  all  know  what  it  is  to  avoid  circumstances 

—  to  pray  that  the  uncomfortable  particular  thorn  may  be 
withdrawn  —  that  difficulty  and  pain  may  cease  —  or  even, 
like  Elijah,  to  say  "  Let  me  die,  for  I  am  not  better  than 
my  fathers."  Each  of  us  more  than  he  admits  has  Becky 
Sharp's  theory, — "  I  think  I  could  be  good  on  £5,000  a 
year  ! " 

We  praise  endurance  and  preach  it  to  others:  but  when 
our  turn  comes  we  flinch.  We  want  to  learn  obedience  in 
some  other  than  the  grammar  school  of  suffering,  and  resent 
the  processes  by  which  God  would  get  the  world  out  of  us 
by  keeping  us  in  it. 

But  it  is  not  by  withdrawal,  but  by  courage  in  the  face  of 
all  the  world  can  do  or  deny,  that  we  magnify  the  power  of 
grace  to  keep.     "  In  your  patience  ye  shall  win  your  souls  " 

—  make  them  really  your  own  !  Absent-mindedness  can 
not  do  the  business.  They  who,  like  our  Intercessor,  carry 
Heaven  with  them,  challenge  all  horizontal  things  with  the 
confidence  that  God  will  give  truth  the  victory  in  a  fair  fight. 

93 


Strength  lies  not  in  avoiding  the  enemy  but  in  sticking 
close  to  the  leader;  for  nothing  will  surrender  to  a  force  that 
is  always  falling  back.  Christ  was  a  man  among  men  —  not 
locally  but  spiritually  "  separate  from  sinners."  The  com- 
mon life  of  the  busy  and  bleeding  and  wicked  and  yearning 
world  was  His  arena. 

That  goodness  which  would  thrive  by  getting  into  a  lit- 
tle room  and  fastening  all  windows  and  doors,  will  suffocate. 
The  Christian  man  will  be  forced  constantly  to  his  base  of 
supplies:  but  he  can  be  in  the  largest  sense  a  man  of  affairs. 
He  will,  if  he  is  a  good  soldier,  be  more  anxious  about  the 
ammunition  wagon  than  the  ambulance.  He  will  not  pray 
to  be  taken  out  of  the  harness,  but  to  die  with  the  tugs 
straight  ! 

A  John  Bright  knows  how  to  keep  himself  unspotted  from 
the  world.  Statesmanship  need  not  be  statecraft.  There 
are  filthy  politicians,  nevertheless  politics  is  a  noble  calling. 
There  are  shyster  lawyers,  and  editors  who  come  cheap,  and 
time-serving,  apologetic  preachers,  and  business  men  whose 
morals  are  frightfully  decollete  :  but  "  go  not  after  their  way." 

Temptation  like  contagion  must  always  have  some  re- 
sponse in  its  subject.  It  is  not  contact  with  worldliness 
but  affinity  with  it,  and  consent,  that  pulls  a  soul  to  pieces. 

Here  lie  the  life  and  power  of  what  we  call  the  Church. 
The  salt  must  be  applied.  The  light  must  shine  not  under 
a  bushel  nor  a  bed  !  To  be  "  carried  to  the  skies  "  is  no 
concern  of  yours  yet.  When  Elijah  has  swept  Carmel  then 
God  will  send  him  His  own  carriage,  but  not  to  any  juniper 
bush  !  Men  need  men  —  inspired,  inspiriting  men.  You 
are  here  to  help  —  you  are  equipped  to  serve  —  to  spend 
your  last  ounce  of  energy  for  Him  who  loved  the  world  be- 
cause it  could  be  saved  !  Exploit  it  —  it  will  exploit  you ! 
Your  fellows,  right  on  this  planet,  need  muscles,  not  crutches 
—  courage,  not  cold-pieces ;  and  no  man  gives  until  he  gives 
himself  !  What  a  man  has,  too  often  declares  the  price  the 
world  has  paid  for  him.  What  a  man  does  for  the  world, 
94 


measures  what  he  would  be  worth.  Once  there  was  a  Man 
Who, —  but  that's  the  Gospel  ! 

The  problem  of  Christian  progress  is  not  to  get  good  men 
away  from  the  world,  but  to  get  them  close  to  it.  The  less 
worldliness  there  is  in  a  man  the  readier  will  he  be  to  come  to 
close  quarters,  where  others,  weakly  good,  dare  not  take  the 
seeming  risks  of  fidelity.  It  is  one  thing  to  read  medicine,  or 
even  to  take  it,  and  quite  another  to  practice  it.  We  are 
afraid  of  catching  something,  and  that  is  where  the  epi- 
demic gets  us  ! 

To  avoid  those  grapples  that  put  us  to  the  strain  confesses 
weakness.  For  instance,  it  is  because  men's  civic  principles 
are  so  brittle  (  not  so  good  )  that  city  politics  often  become 
the  puddle  and  trough  of  the  loathsome.  Alleged  respecta- 
bility disowns  right  itself  when  it  votes  the  regular  ticket  of 
partisan  lepers,  who  "fear  not  God  nor  regard  man."  Our 
sewer-scented  municipalities  need  less  cologne  and  more 
chloride  of  lime.  Schemes  to  evade  the  world  must  always 
be  less  efficient  than  plans  to  master  it.  That  was  a  bright 
bit  of  Rufus  Choate's  wit,  when  to  one  who  asked  after  his 
health  he  replied  that  he  "  had  used  up  his  constitution  and 
was  living  on  the  by-laws."  And  it  is  when  we  have  run  out 
of  inspiration  that  we  idolize  organization  as  such  and  trust 
in  appliances.  For  processes  of  mere  manipulation  often 
strangle  the  truth,  and  good  causes  are  smothered  by  pon- 
derous committees. 

One  of  the  surest  ways  to  get  a  thing  done  is  to  do  it  your- 
self. Saul  strutted  about  in  his  defensive  armor  while 
David,  with  simpler  equipment,  took  the  offensive.  Good- 
ishness  guards  its  rear  —  Gospel  grit  pushes  its  front.  It  was 
Grant  who  said:  "When  this  army  is  beaten  it  won't  need 
any  supplies." 

We  are  too  worldly  to  dare  to  meet  worldliness  and  con- 
front evil  right  where  it  lives.  We  want  to  segregate  good- 
ness ;  Christ  would  colonize  it.  He  sends  men,  as  He  sends 
nations,  to   open   up    the   world    and  let  in   the  day.     The 

95 


cleansing  of  one  Havana  does  more  to  purge  the  world  than 
all  the  quarantine  regulations  ever  framed.  Our  divine 
Pattern  would  save  us  by  having  us  save  others. 

Any  company  of  men  fancying  itself  "good,"  that  sits 
and  harangues  itself  about  its  "  privileges  ",  is  as  unreal  and 
spectacular  as  a  theatre,  and  its  exercises,  even  tho  called 
religious,  are  mere  sentimental  vaporings. 

"  I  pray  not  that  thou  shouldst  take  them  out  of  the 
world.  '     Christianity  is  far  more  than  a  mere  protest. 

The  evil  of  "  the  world  "  —  the  root  of  all  evil,  which  our 
Lord  prayed  that  we  might  be  kept  from,  is  selfishness.  It 
may  be  orthodox  or  not  —  Pharisee  or  Sadducee  —  little 
odds  which,  so  it  merely  theorizes  truth  and  but  depicts 
duty.  First  Christ  prayed  against  the  evil  world,  then  He 
died  for  it  ! 

He  not  merely  prescribed  the  cure,  He  became  the  cure. 
We,  dainty,  greedy,  ungrateful,  underrate  the  responsiveness 
of  men,  at  large  and  in  detail,  to  the  power  which  in  self- 
sacrifice  overcomes  evil  with  good. 

All  men  instinctively  distinguish  between  real  human  love 
which  needs  no  other  defense,  and  self-love  exhibiting  and 
defending  itself  in  condescension.  If  one  holds  himself  apart 
as  super-precious  and  important,  if  he  makes  helpfulness  an 
incident  rather  than  an  aim,  if  he  merely  praises  the  efforts 
of  others,  he  thus  becomes  a  part  of  the  incubus. 

For  if  you  are  not  a  lifter  you  are  an  addition  to  the  load, 
and  in  the  light  of  the  very  Gospel  be  it  firmly  said,  that  if  we 
are  too  good  to  be  used  we  are  not  good  for  anything  ! 

And  why  should  any  one  of  you  shun  the  suffering  sinful- 
ness of  this  struggling  and  piteous  world  ?  Why  should  any 
of  you  try  to  climb  up  by  using  those  who  are  down  ? 

Reverently  we  may  paraphrase  our  text,  —  "I  prav  not  to 
put  them  in  Heaven,  but  to  put  Heaven  into  them.  '  The 
Prince  of  Life  anchored  His  Gospel  in  the  world  by  bringing 
it  in  Person.  He  so  took  up  His  residence  here  that  the 
common  everyday  people  of  Syria  heard  Him  gladly.     He 

96 


did  it  and  we  must  do  it,  or  Cease  to  pray, —  u  Tliy  will  be 
done  on  Earth  as  it  is  in  Heaven." 

Would  any  of  you  be  such  a  man  ?  Nay,  will  you  not  all 
be  such  ?  In  the  world,  yet  none  of  it.  For  it,  not  from  it. 
The  ship  floats  in  the  water  until  the  water  gets  into  the 
ship.  It  is  not  location,  but  relation,  that  shall  differentiate 
you  from  the  element  in  which  you  are  placed.  Your  pro- 
bation hinges  there. 

Emancipation  from  the  things  seen  and  temporal  is  in 
deliverance  from  the  world's  spirit,  philosophy,  temper,  lust, 
—  not  from  its  problems. 

It  often  takes  sharp  surprises  and  bitter  sufferings  to 
make  one  aware  how  much  he  has  allowed  himself  to 
become  involved  in  the  world's  pretentious  bankruptcy. 
Meet  life  now  in  its  demands,  not  run  from  it,  and  save 
yourself  too  sharp  a  shock  and  too  bitter  a  pang.  Pray 
yourself  the  prayer  Christ  prayed  for  all  disciples. 

For  all  men  do  practically  pray  something.  Some  pray  — 
Give  me  the  world  —  the  pride  of  life, —  and  success  be- 
comes an  optimism  which  angers  at  any  contradiction  of  its 
dream;  failure,  a  pessimism  angry  at  both  rebuke  and  remedy. 

Or  some  pray  — Take  it  away  —  Take  me  away. 

But  third,  and  hardest  and  noblest  and  surest,  is  the 
prayer, —  Keep  me  in  it  and  yet  keep  me  from  it. 

Agur's  prayer  was  prudent, —  "  Give  me  neither  poverty 
nor  riches';  but  deeper,  wiser,  were  it  to  say  to  God, — 
As  Thou  wilt,  give  me  either  poverty  or  riches. 

Men  of  the  Class  of  1900  : 

Would  you  indeed  be  men,  learn  a  noble  non-conform- 
ity to  all  patterns  save  One.  Make  yourselves  by  His  help 
a  known  quantity  for  good  in  a  world  where  you  are  bidden 
to  be  laborers  together  with  God. 

"  Ah,  what  a  wondrous  thing  it  is 
To  note  how  many  wheels  of  toil 
One  thought,  one  word,  can  set  in  motion.'* 

97 


Count  nothing  small  that  you  do  bravely  to  make  the 
world  nearer  to  what  God  wills  it  to  be. 

Neither  antiquated  nor  new-fangled,  meet  what  each  year 
brings  you,  sure  that  in  all  the  flux  of  your  time  there  are 
fixed  stars  by  which  to  sail  to  a  desired  haven. 

The  century  in  which  you  were  born  has  a  mighty  mes- 
sage to  the  century  in  which  you  shall  die:  but  Christ's 
message  is  one  for  them  both,  and  for  you  all.  Remember 
that  manly  man  who  a  year  ago  was  your  teacher,  and  not 
less  a  friend.  Cleave  to  such  men  as  Grosvenor  Hopkins 
was.  Strive  to  be  such  men,  and  pass  down  from  this  divide 
of  your  years  into  the  valleys  where  rare  harvests  invite  the 
reapers. 

In  the  memory  of  the  College  that  mothers  you,  recognize 
the  inspirations  of  her  historic  past.  Whatever  she  has  been 
to  you,  she  may  be  more  and  will  be  more  to  you,  as  you 
look  back  to  the  friendships,  the  unconscious  tuitions,  the 
happy  reveries  and  the  prophetic  dreams.  Once,  twice, 
thrice  more,  all  of  you  together,  and  then  never  again  this 
side  the  war!  May  your  Lord  and  Master  " fulfil  for  you 
every  desire  of  goodness  and  every  work  of  faith,  with 
power."  I  do  not  want  to  let  you  go :  but  all  the  rest  must 
speak  unspoken. 


98 


SPECIALISM  AND  SYMPATHY 

TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS,  JUNE  23,  1901 

Love  is  the  fulfilment  of  law.     Romans  13 :10. 

My  purpose  is  to  speak  of  two  aspects  of  all  mental  earn- 
estness as  they  combine  in  a  true  theory  of  education;  then 
of  this  true  theory  of  education  as  it  increases  personal  char- 
acter and  vital  influence. 

I  would  restate  and  if  I  can  reim press  some  fundamental 
principles  in  which  you  are  already  well  begun,  and  in  which 
I  know  you  must  continue  to  advance  if  you  are  to  be  men  of 
discrimination  and  efficiency.  Two  things  I  shall  try  to 
urge  as  mutually  indispensable  in  the  real  development  of 
both  mental  and  moral  life, —  Specialism  and  Sympathy. 
Each  consideration  touches  present  and  permanent  problems 
in  education,  as  this  in  its  means  and  ends  is  concerned 
with  that  harmony  between  capacity  and  energy  which 
unifies  and  intensifies  life. 

From  these  two  descriptives  I  would  attempt  to  cleanse 
some  obscurities,  and  would  carry  your  convictions  toward 
that  comprehensive  view  of  them  which  is  instantly  related 
to  manly  growth  in  both  knowledge  and  grace.  The  correct 
vision  of  these  two  duties  of  the  mind  must  open  a  generous 
and  inviting  vista,  and  invite  you  to  proceed  with  that 
honest  caution  which  ministers  to  the  surest  courage. 

Emerson  somewhere  wrote  that  "  The  poorest  poem  is 
better  than  the  best  criticism  upon  it."  How  much  easier 
it  is  to  write  poor  poetry  than  to  write  good  criticism  there 
are  doubtless  here  as  many  as  several  who  know  well  !  But 
I  suppose  he  meant  not  that,  but  that  creation  is  nobler  in 
kind  than  inspection.  And  I  take  a  little  comfort  as  I  try 
not  merely  to  construe  words  but  to  construct  an  idea  and 
an  ideal  whose  sum  shall  be  just  to  its  each  part.  "  Mixing 
things  ( said  Mrs.  Carlyle  )  is  the  great  bad. 

99 


Law  is  rational  order  and  its  interpretation.  Science  is 
that  careful  and  arranged  appreciation  of  this  order  which 
classifies  and  ratifies  every  kind  of  attainable  knowledge. 
It  is  information  philosophised  into  that  mental  result  which 
reads  out  of  the  fact  what  the  Supreme  Mind  has  written 
into  it.     It  is  a  recognition  of  reality  far  anterior  to  itself. 

Love  goes  deeper.  It  is  of  the  will.  It  gathers  all  feeling 
into  consent.  It  establishes  voluntary  relation  to  that  wis- 
dom which  thro  law  addresses  life.  It  is  intelligent  affinity, 
—  the  soul's  Amen  to  the  divine  Yea.  It  incorporates  law 
and  transcends  it.  Law  teaches  and  invites  the  response  of 
life  thro  love,  and  love  is  life  filling  law  full. 

Now  Specialism  is  the  legal  method  of  the  brain  under 
man's  double  limitation  in  both  ability  and  time. 

Divide  et  impera  is  its  behest.  It  detaches  one  single 
range  of  research  or  enterprise.  It  is  particular,  focal,  and 
individualistic.  As  to  one  thing  it  would  know  all  that  can 
be  known  or  do  all  that  can  be  done.  It  concentrates  its 
power  upon  a  point,  and  by  intense  abstraction  and  an  ever 
closer  subdivision  and  analysis  it  pushes  the  wary  atom  to 
its  lair.  The  specialist  sinks  one  shaft.  He  gazes  thro  a 
tube  at  his  single  object.  In  art  or  affairs  he  is  utterly  de- 
voted to  his  one  investigation.  In  whatsoever  realm,  the 
instincts  of  the  honest  specialist  are  vigilance  and  thoroness; 
eagerly  he  plods,  slowly  he  hastens.  His  errand  is  not  to 
impose  theories  but  to  uncover  facts.  Patiently  he  prepares 
the  way.  His  function  is  not  to  plead  a  case  but  to  gather 
the  evidence.  His  attitude  has  been  typical  of  all  the  learn- 
ing of  our  time,  as  it  has  been  the  note  of  all  the  vast  and 
masterful  expansion  of  our  mechanic  arts. 

But  Specialism  is  hemi-spherical.  If  we  would  not  be 
"ever  learning  and  never  able  to  come  to  a  knowledge  of  the 
truth,"  we  must  know  that  life  is  not  a  circle  but  an  ellipse. 
That  which  mind  perceives  is  one  of  the  two  focii — the 
mind  which  perceives  is  the  other.  These  bivalve  parts  are 
inter-regulative  and  co-efficient. 

100 


Curiosity  without  co-ordination  is  aimless  and  futile.  In 
all  factoring,  analysis  is  a  full  half:  but  it  is  only  half;  the 
other  half  is  synthesis.  The  one  must  distinguish  and  the 
other  must  combine.  And  the  mood  and  effort  in  which  the 
synthesis  is  realized  is  Sympathy. 

Analysis  unties,  synthesis  unites.  The  means  are  instru- 
mental to  this  end.  The  portion  seeks  the  sum.  In  a 
creation  where  all  separate  things  have  this  supreme  affinity, 
namely,  that  they  exist  in  one  total,  all  facts  are  gregarious. 
They  interlace  and  are  reticulated.  To  dissect  and  there 
quit  them  is  to  destroy.  The  severalty  can  only  be  under- 
stood by  the  jointure.  The  community  of  interest  is  what 
makes  the  "effectual  working  together"  of  the  manifold 
items,  and  so  makes  them  intelligible.  All  suffer  and  rejoice 
interactively.  "The  whole  creation  (  and  because  a  whole) 
travaileth  in  pain  together." 

Sympathy  cares  for  what  all  parts  share  in  the  sum.  It 
is  vital;  for  life  is  concerned  with  the  total  unity  of  a  total 
world.  Study  the  staves,  study  the  hoops  that  clasp  them, 
so  as  to  study  the  heads,  and  at  last  the  barrel.  You  must 
build  as  well  as  carve  —  if  you  are  to  fill  full  the  barrel. 
The  mere  addition  of  these  various  shreds  will  not  give  you 
the  result;  for  assorting  is  not  consorting:  but  their  proper 
combination  will,  as  each  gives  and  receives  meaning  to  and 
from  the  purposed  end.  Here  is  one  more  vindication  of 
my  pet  paradox,  that  except  in  the  abstraction  of  mathe- 
matics the  whole  is  always  greater  than  the  sum  of  its  parts. 
Mere  juxtaposition  is  barren.  A  football  team  is  more  than 
eleven  players.  Our  nation  is  more  than  forty-five  states. 
You  are  more  than  your  aggregate  faculties.  A  sentence  is 
more  than  the  words  it  assembles.  The  '  law  of  the  spirit  of 
life '  is  more  than  the  separate  activities  which  it  uses. 

After  all  the  statics  and  dynamics  under  which  your  bar- 
rel is  built,  the  question  of  what  shall  fill  it  is  cardinal. 
Remember  to  be  good  coopers:  but  remember  to  be  more 
than  coopers.     And  consider  that  a  barrel  must  at  least  con- 

101 


tain  enough  to  be  worth  freightage.  It  pays  to  carry  a 
"fulfilment"  of  flour  from  Minneapolis  to  the  seaboard; 
but  the  same  space  full  of  shavings  would  mulct  the  consig- 
nee.    Better  be  a  keg  of  dry  powder  than  a  cask  of  putty  ! 

Sympathy  is  telepathy.  All  things  and  all  men  are  inter- 
dependent. Relation  designates  co-responsibility.  This 
rescues  every  detail  from  incoherency.  Its  high  kinship  is 
the  nobility  of  the  instant  and  the  instance.  To  forget  the 
implication  of  any  part  of  anything  is  to  strip  it  of  meaning 
and  to  make  it  a  sherd.  The  exaggeration  of  individualism 
is  its  secession  and  defeat.  Your  Latin  teaches  you  that  its 
synonym  is  egotism,  your  Greek  that  it  is  idiocy. 

You  must  inspect  in  order  to  contract.  The  strands  are  in 
order  to  the  cable,  —  the  day  in  order  to  the  year.  Sympa- 
thy does  not  proceed  toward  a  quotient,  but  a  multiplicand. 

"  To  see  life  steadily  and  see  it  whole  "  is  to  know  that 
man  is  naturally  federative,  and  that  no  fact  or  fellow  is 
alien  from  any  man's  endowment  in  God. 

While  Specialism  all  by  itself  is  isolar,  gibbous,  sexless, 
barren;  Sympathy,  with  all  that  is  and  can  be,  brings  us  into 
fellowship  with  the  '  One  law,  one  love,  one  element.'  It  is 
the  pollen  of  life.  It  fertilizes  all  capacity.  Law  and  love 
are  thus  necessary  complements.  Finally,  they  are  not 
merely  harmonious  but  vitally  identical.  The  whole  man, 
the  integral  man,  the  man  whom  they  together  have  freed 
from  astigmatism,  uses  them  as  interchangeable  terms,  and 
sings  with  Browning, — 

"  All's  love  ;  but  all's  law,"— 

and  so  to  the  higher  chemistry  gives  them  one  symbol  ! 

Not  omniscience  then,  which  is  the  modern  gnosticism,  is 
your  goal:  but  unity  of  feeling  with  every  other  child  of  the 
one  Father,  and  the  appreciation  that  of  that  unity  the 
unity  of  all  the  tangible  and  optical  world  is  the  parable 
and  pedestal.  Even  if  Specialism  could  ever  become  omnis- 
cience, Sympathy  would  still  be  omnipotence. 

102 


If  you  follow  me,  you  cannot  think  that  I  am  disparaging 
analysis.  I  exalt  it,  in  the  name  of  that  synthesis  which  is 
its  warrant  and  its  crown.  They  are  the  two  sides  of  the 
one  coin,  obverse  and  reverse,  from  the  same  mint.  They 
are  the  bi-sexual  reason! 

Unwarped,  unthwarted,  every  true  and  severe  task,  of  the 
mind  or  of  the  hand,  of  study  or  of  action,  leads  from  the 
particular  to  the  general,  from  the  mechanical  to  the  vital, 
thro  the  rational  to  the  emotional.  The  fulfilment  suffuses 
the  process.  We  are  fuel  for  that  fire.  The  Way,  the  Truth 
and  the  Life  speaks,  and  our  hearts  burn  within  us.  So  are 
we  fashioned.  A  full  connection  and  circuit,  and  that  which 
is  not  of  the  wire  leaps  thro  it  !  For  all  science,  of  the 
senses  or  of  the  soul,  is  in  order  that  we  may  realize  life  and 
Him  who  grants  and  guides  it.  In  this  half-time,  so  much 
dominated  by  the  apparent,  we  are  to  be  delivered  from 
considering  ourselves  as  mere  cogs  and  pinions  of  an  appara- 
tus, by  those  spatial  affinities  which  convince  us  that  the 
enginery  is  less  than  the  engineer,  and  the  track  less  than 
the  destination. 

"  Two  worlds  are  ours,"  and  thereto  even  the  "  flower  in 
the  crannied  wall  "  is  a  witness.  Between  the  outmost  and 
the  inmost  —  between  "  the  starry  worlds  and  the  con- 
science " —  the  Presence ! 

Sympathy  then, —  that  co-feeling  which  makes  kin,  com- 
mon-weal, catholicity  of  heart,  the  whole  as  the  point  of 
view, —  this  I  urge. 

It  is  more  than  amount  of  knowledge,  it  is  motive. 
Motive  more  than  locomotive !  Accuracy  not  for  the  arrow's 
sake,  but  for  the  archer's. 

So  may  you  be  delivered,  whether  in  the  laboratory  or 
the  closet  or  the  factory  or  the  field  or  the  chair,  from  the 
idolatry  of  your  particular  topic  or  sub-topic,  nor  hold  any 
of  your  acquisitions  as  a  self-sufficing  end.  Each  is  for  all. 
Regard  for  one's  own  segment  of  industry,  if  it  becomes 
antipathetic  or  even  apathetic  toward  the   tasks  of  others 

103 


will  greatly  diminish  your  value  even  on  your  own  half -acre; 
while  a  genuine  human  interest  in  the  relation  of  your 
knowledge  to  another's,  of  your  search  to  another's  search, 
will  encourage  both  him  and  you.  Always  there  are  others! 
In  every  sphere  of  man's  attempts,  large-hear tedness  is  the 
antidote  for  that  over-concentration  which  in  ignoring  other 
parts  frustrates  its  own, 

Let  it  be  Government.  The  durable  patriotism  is  not 
parochial  nor  provincial,  nor  even  merely  continental:  but 
it  is  international.  The  commonalty  and  reciprocity  of  all 
the  families  of  Earth  is  the  corrollary  of  that  prayer  which 
Europe  and  America  owe  to  that  true  Light  of  Asia  Who 
was  the  Light  of  the  World  !  Love,  like  light,  makes  no 
apology,  but  is  universally  diffusive.  In  the  sight  of  God 
they  are  the  barbarous  nations  who  treat  others  as  such  ! 
A  mere  localized  philanthropy  is  only  a  modified  misan- 
thropy. No  eulogy  of  Man  goes  well  with  the  obloquy  of 
men  or  races  of  men. 

Let  it  be  Literature.  It  is  valid  as  the  reflection  of  life. 
Life  is  the  dominant  —  the  strong,  searching,  chord.  The 
specializing  of  language  as  such  is  external  to  the  impulses 
which  make  words  subservient  to  rich  feeling,  and  find  those 
the  only  classics  which  hold  the  world's  heart.  The  best  is 
that  which  most  invites  and  best  endures  translation.  To 
get  and  to  appreciate  another  point  of  view, —  this  is  the 
benefit.  Motif  then  is  more  than  technique.  We  study  the 
masters  of  English,  if  duly,  that  we  may  value  and  per- 
petuate the  genius  of  English  manhood.  Hebrew,  Greek, 
Latin  —  all  tongues,  or  modern  or  antique,  —  they  are 
human.  Their  polyglot  finds  Sympathy  of  one  speech. 
This  is  the  Pentecostal  affluence  which  reverses  Babel  ! 
Philology  ought  to  inspire  a  philanthropy  which  forgets  race 
and  date.  Toward  the  whole  synthesis  of  mankind  litera- 
ture is  the  most  potent  and  perennial  influence.  It  is  the 
vessel  of  prophecy.  By  it  the  dead  speak.  No  language 
that  has  voiced  a  literature  can  ever  be  dead  except  to  men 

104 


who  are  not  alive.  It  is  a  mirror  in  which,  for  those  who 
will  look,  heart  answers  heart.  "  To  learn  language  (  wrote 
John  P.  Coyle  )  but  not  literature  is  to  be  barely  human,  — 
to  be  a  non-historical  man.  Literature  is  specifically  higher 
than  language.  It  stands  for  a  higher  type  of  a  corporate 
life.  It  is  the  chief  agency  thro  which  the  higher  historical 
forces  are  transmitted,  with  least  refraction  or  deflection,  or 
diminution  of  energy."  Hence  the  Bible.  One  should 
study  Greek  to  understand  the  Greeks  —  German  to  under- 
stand the  Germans  —  and  specialize  in  any  tongue  so  as  to 
sympathize  with  the  men  who  speak  or  who  spake  it.  So 
let  grammar  and  glossary  do  their  best :  but  so  that  they 
may  lead  to  the  Library,  and  there  the  Library  pour  its 
gold  into  the  furnaces  of  Life  !    $4$ 

Or  let  it  be  Sociology.  What  is  Society,  or  the  still  in- 
choate because  unethicised  science  thereof,  without  sympa- 
thy ?  Society  itself  is  a  super-specialistic  term.  Work  and 
wages  and  weal,  brain  and  brawn,  craft  and  craftiness,  get 
and  give, —  our  Economics, —  must  be  debrutalized,  intensely 
humanized,  nay  evangelized,  if  it  is  not  to  be  a  dismal 
swamp  of  bog  and  malaria.  Subdivisive  specialism  will  not 
shoulder  the  load.  We  need  first  a  justified  and  second  an 
applied  generalization  —  Ethics,  which  is  universal  equity. 
Over  against  every  wrong  a  right,  by  the  side  of  every 
right  a  duty,  sympathetic  deed:  else  antipathy  and  nations 
slipping  in  blood  ! 

"  Does  business  mean  — '  Die  you  live  I  !' 
Then  '  Trade  is  trade  !'  but  sings  a  lie; 
'Tis  only  War  grown  miserly." 

Or  be  it  the  Church.  If  it  is  not  to  be  a  dissonance  of 
clanging  symbols  ( and  you  may  write  the  first  sibilant 
either  way )  it  must  recognize  that  Theology  like  every 
other  science  is  a  specialty,  but  that  Religion  is  a  sym- 
pathy. Its  privilege  is  essentially  inclusive  and  flatters  no 
selfish  exceptionalist  !  Caste  is  anti-Christ.  To  care  for 
God  is  to  care  for  men  as  God  understands  them.     To  clas- 

105 


sify  and  segregate  sympathy  here  is  to  tear  the  vesture  of 
the  Lord  —  to  divide  His  heart.  The  real  Church  is  at  once 
the  infirmary  and  the  arsenal  of  all  souls.  Comprehension 
is  its  passion  and  its  power.  It  is  either  a  plan  and  specifi- 
cation of  Society  as  it  ought  to  be  and  as  God  means  it  shall 
be,  or  it  is  the  most  stupendous  failure  of  history  —  all  fail- 
ures in  one  !  But  if  the  sympathy  of  God  is  not  impracti- 
cable and  the  Gospel  stultified,  then  to  join  the  Church  is 
to  join  mankind  ! 

So  then,  by  all  this  illustration,  "Love  is  the  fulfilling  of 
the  law,"  and  in  every  way  Sympathy,  which  is  love's  vindi- 
cation, stands  as  an  ideal,  a  motive  and  a  goal,  over  against 
the  insularities,  the  antagonisms,  the  envies,  and  all  the  Kil- 
kenny quarrels  of  partisans  and  egotists.  Not  money  for 
money's  sake,  nor  art  for  art's  sake,  nor  science  for  science's 
sake;  but  all  these  for  man's  sake,  and  for  every  man's. 

"  Such  as  the  love  is,  ( said  Swedenborg )  such  is  the  wis- 
dom." Out  of  specialism  are  the  issues  of  knowledge  but 
"  out  of  the  heart  are  the  issues  of  life."  Knowledge  alone 
inflates  —  Love  upbuilds.  If  my  distinction  is  clear  it  in- 
volves its  own  applications  and  appeals. 

My  illustration  is  special  in  so  far  as  it  is  pedagogic,  but  I 
seek  to  use  this  but  as  a  good  instance  and  in  sympathy 
with  all  things  that  it  subtends,  even  to  the  very  highest. 
True  education  is  eduction  —  the  outdrawing  of  the  utmost 
capacity.  The  market  value  of  it  is  in  its  production  of 
whole  men,  wide-based  and  well-builded,  such  as  are  more 
and  more  demanded  for  the  enlarging  and  compacting  part- 
nerships of  mankind.  "  The  function  of  education  (writes 
Herbert  Spencer)  is  to  prepare  for  complete  living."  It 
should  teach  men  to  generalize  well,  and  thus,  in  the  appre- 
ciation of  large  relations  and  in  the  inclusion  of  many 
points  of  view,  best  to  compass  each  his  own  work. 

The  truest  preparation  toward  any  one  calling  is  wide- 
mindedness,  and  the  alert,  the  agile,  the  joyful  application 
of  diverse  and  even  oblique  bearings.     The  wider  the  lens 

106 


the  more  rays  it  focuses.  The  narrow  tire  wears  a  deep 
rut;  but  the  broad  wheel  both  arrives  earlier  with  a  larger 
load  and  also  betters  the  way  for  those  who  follow. 

The  great  Italians  are  the  first  and  finest  instance  of  a 
various  and  superb  general  ability.  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  Fra 
Paoli  Sarpi,  Michael  Angelo,  are  of  a  group  more  than 
ambidextrous,  who  wrought  wonderfully  in  many  fields. 
Their  specialty  was  to  live.  Moses  was  such  a  man,  and  it 
took  an  Angelo  to  interpret  his  heroic  mould. 

An  interest  aroused  and  established  in  the  whole  round  of 
lore  and  life,  a  heart  responsive  to  the  multiformity  of 
knowledge  and  endeavor, —  this  is  the  best  preliminary  prepa- 
ration for  any  and  every  particular  pursuit.  If  a  too- early 
partialism  crowds  this  aside,  it  steals  away  that  horizon 
beyond  his  peculiar  task  which,  for  the  relief  of  his  intellect 
and  for  the  health  of  his  heart,  every  man  needs.  When 
professionalism  becomes  a  vice  it  is  because  it  looks  meager- 
ly  and  torpidly  upon  all  that  does  not  fit  its  own  furrow,  is 
only  practical  at  one  angle.  It  lacks  amity  and  comity.  It 
is  selfish.  Its  analog  is  in  that  piteous  and  happily  rare  dis- 
ease of  the  eye  in  which  vision  can  only  see  in  one  direct  line 
and  is  as  if  directed  thro  a  gun  barrel.    Blindness  supervenes. 

Solitary  and  intense  concentration  requires  the  offset  of  a 
well- taught  and  therefore  early- taught  outlook,  uplook,  in- 
look,  onlook.  Bare  routine  of  head  or  hand,  becoming 
automatic,  starves  ideality.  Only  large  conviction  and  a 
sense  of  relativity  can  school  that  content  and  sweet  heart- 
edness  which,  because  of  the  ultimate  meanings  beyond  all 
present  utilities,  confers  upon  each  plain  and  frugal  task  the 
touch  of  finality. 

Only  sincere  sympathy  can  redeem  any  specialty  from 
monotony  and  myopia:  but  this  sympathy  gives  momentum 
to  all  skill,  and  in  its  climate  the  eyes  kindle,  because 
"  patience  worketh  experience,  and  experience  hope,  and 
hope  maketh  not  ashamed,  because  love  is  shed  abroad  in 
the  heart."     Here  is  where  comes  in  the  humanistic  side  of 

107 


education.  In  his  final  published  article  it  was  thus  put  by 
one  of  our  noblest  graduates,  who  this  year  has  begun  his 
endless  'summer  in  a  garden,' — Charles  Dudley  Warner 
of  51. 

"  The  better  part  of  the  life  of  a  man  is  in  and  by  the 
imagination.  This  is  not  generally  believed,  because  it  is 
not  generally  believed  that  the  chief  end  of  man  is  the  accu- 
mulation of  intellectual  and  spiritual  material.  Hence  it  is 
that  what  is  called  a  practical  education  is  set  above  the 
mere  enlargement  and  enrichment  of  the  mind,  and  the 
possession  of  the  material  is  valued  and  the  intellectual  life 
is  undervalued.  But  it  should  be  remembered  that  the  best 
preparation  for  a  practical  and  useful  life  is  in  the  high 
development  of  the  powers  of  the  mind,  and  that  com- 
monly by  a  culture  that  is  not  considered  practical.  The 
notable  fact  about  the  group  of  great  parliamentary  ora- 
tors in  the  days  of  George  III.  is  the  exhibition  of  their 
intellectual  resources  in  the  entire  world  of  letters,  the 
classics  and  ancient  and  modern  history.  Yet  all  of  them 
owed  their  development  to  a  strictly  classical  training  in  the 
schools.  And  most  of  them  had  not  only  the  gift  of  the 
imagination  necessary  to  great  eloquence,  but  also  were  so 
mentally  disciplined  by  the  classics  that  they  handled  the 
practical  questions  upon  which  they  legislated  with  clear- 
ness and  decision.  The  great  masters  of  finance  were  the 
classically- trained  orators  William  Pitt  and  Charles  James 
Fox." 

The  old  term,  "  a  liberal  education,"  and  the  thing  itself, 
it  is  today  a  fad  to  challenge  and  with  much  self-sufficient 
ascerbity;  but  I  make  bold  to  urge  that  "  liberal  education  " 
was  never  more  needed,  both  to  introduce  the  skill  and  to 
amend  the  tenuity  of  the  expert.  In  spite  of  all  belligerent 
neological  dogmas  liberality  of  mind  and  purpose  is  indis- 
pensable. Liberality  has  many  windows  and  many  doors, 
and  makes  room  at  its  hearth  for  every  guest  that  is  clean 
and   sane.      It  is  constructive,  and  so  while  hospitable   it 

108 


does  not  keep  a  disorderly  house!  Its  liberty  is  not  license 
nor  its  largeness  laxity.  It  is  broad,  but  its  dimensions 
include  depth  also.  It  neither  abandons  law  nor  worships 
it.     It  follows  the  "  more  excellent  way." 

Such  an  education  puts  no  premium  upon  haste,  nor  does 
it  discount  future  power  by  an  immature  substitution  of 
learning  for  training.  It  is  structural  toward  the  whole 
man  and  seeks  to  issue  him  not  besmeared  but  bessemered. 
It  considers  the  capable  metal  more  than  the  commercial 
false  edge.  Self-realization  is  the  end.  It  seeks  not  yours 
but  you  !  It  teaches  you  to  ponder  the  wherefore  and  the 
whither.  You  are  not  tools  but  men.  If  you  would  be 
handy  in  this  big  world  you  must  be  hearty.  Just  in  so  far 
as  you  are  men,  and  no  further,  will  your  scholarship  prove 
available.  For  in  letters  and  in  life,  in  art  and  religion,  in 
school  and  house,  in  whatever  balances  the  harm  and  heals 
the  hurt,  in  whatever  makes  woman  tender  and  man  brave, 
whatever  enlarges  the  scholar,  the  seer,  the  saint,  —  Sym- 
pathy interprets  and  bonds  all  things,  and  "  passe th  all  things 
for  illumination."     It  gives  quality  to  quantity. 

Men  of  the  Class  of  1901 : 

You  are  the  best  class  that  ever  graduated  from  this  Col- 
lege in  the  twentieth  century  !  When  from  the  Gymnasium 
gallery  that  bears  your  imprimatur  forty  classes  look  down 
upon  you,  may  you  still  be  without  a  better  !  I  shall  not 
be  there.  You  have  had  "  tutors  and  governors  until  the 
time  appointed."  All  that  is  over.  You  are  glad  and  sorry. 
I  have  at  least  one  good  reason  to  feel  an  especial  proprie- 
tary right  in  you.  I  claim  it  and  you  will  grant  it.  You  will 
keep  faith  with  the  lovely  old  lady  that  lives  on  the  hill  ! 
You  are  a  part  of  her  brood  and  breed.  She  is  not  rich  but 
she  is  kindly.  Such  as  she  has  had  she  has  given  you. 
Keep  it.  Put  it  to  the  good  usury  of  life.  Cherish  every 
pure  ambition,  every  manly  vow.  Revoke  every  mistake. 
In  the  name  of  all  your  teachers,  who  have  also  striven  to 

109 


be  your  friends, —  in  the  name  of  all  the  College  that  is,  that 
has  been,  and  that  shall  be,  —  by  this  last  word  of  admoni- 
tion and  of  hope,  —  I  greet  you.  Bon  voyage  I  May  you 
do  business  in  the  great  waters  of  Time,  and  may  you  not 
come  home  "  in  ballast "  but  deep-laden,  upon  tides  "  too 
full  for  sound  or  foam,"  and  so  with  an  abundant  entrance. 
May  God  always  have  with  you  the  last  word!  Be  perfected 
in  that  love  which  casteth  out  all  fear  ! 

Prayers   for    you,  —  tears   for    you,  —  cheers  for    you,  — 
years  for  you  !     Be  of  good  courage.     Hurrah  !  and  Amen  ! 


UO 


SYMMETRY 

TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS,  JUNE  22,  1902 

Ephraim  is  a  cake  not  turned.     Hosea  7:8. 

With  gratitude  and  hope  I  note  the  passing  years,  and 
for  the  tenth  time  stand  here  to  say  to  you  of  this  latest 
graduating  class  a  word  of  final  exhortation.  Bear  with  it 
and  me  this  once  more.  With  what  I  try  to  utter  to  you  I 
search  myself. 

Hosea  was  both  a  preacher  and  a  type.  Strikingly  he 
instanced  what  it  was  to  carry  the  "  burden "  of  the 
prophet.  His  task  was  vicarious,  as  are  the  tasks  of  all  men 
who  upbear  their  time.  His  words  are  anguished  as  he 
views  the  deep  apostacy  of  the  ten  tribes;  intense  with 
reproach,  with  lament,  with  entreaty,  lurid  with  the  reflec- 
tion of  astounding  wickedness  and  its  impending  wo,  in  a 
day  when  his  land  was  saturated  with  lust  and  blood,  and 
when  elegant  scoffing  went  hand  in  hand  with  vile  degen- 
eracy. The  passion  of  his  broken  rhetoric,  the  abrupt 
blending  of  wrathful  accusation  and  pathetic  appeal,  are  of 
the  very  "  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost." 

The  prophet  snatches  illustration  from  every  side,  and 
midway  in  his  tempestuous  utterance  he  makes  the  plainest 
every-day  comparison  —  a  kitchen  picture  —  serve  his  use. 
He  likens  Israel  to  the  baker's  oven  —  heated,  waiting  while 
the  leaven  works,  standing  hot  thro  the  night,  blazing  out 
in  the  morning,  devouring  all  that  is  near  it.  It  is  sharp  and 
vigorous.  Then  he  swings  the  figure,  and  Ephraim,  who  has 
been  the  red-hot  oven,  is  now  himself  that  which  the  oven 
destroys. 

That  primitive  appliance,  the  oriental  tan-nur,  was  a 
cylinder  of  baked  clay.  Three  feet  high  it  stood,  somewhat 
conical.  The  fire  was  lit  within,  the  baking  placed  against, 
or  plastered  upon,  the  outside.     The  utensil  was  familiar, 

in 


and  its  careless  use  sufficiently  so.  In  every  household  what 
the  prophet  pictures  had  sometime  sacrificed  the  morning 
fare.  A  hot  oven  neglected,  a  "  cake  not  turned  ",  and  a 
ruined  baking, —  one  side  done  too  much,  the  other  not 
done  at  all,  one  side  scorched  and  cindered,  the  other  an 
insipid  paste.  Overdone,  underdone,  undone, —  an  unpalat- 
able and  indigestible  compound  of  grit  and  dough,  sheer 
worthlessness  and  waste.  The  housekeeper  must  begin 
anew,  or  if  flour  and  yeast  are  gone  must  go  hungry. 

There,  then,  is  a  parable  wrapped  small.  Such  a  cake 
Ephraim  was,  and  such,  alas,  is  many  a  modern  man  who 
thinks  it  fine  to  despise  both  Hebrew  and  prophet.  It  is 
the  plainest  suggestion  of  an  abundant  lesson.  It  exhibits 
good  materials  badly  manufactured, —  too  much  fire  and  too 
little  cook  !  Misapplied  fuel,  facilities  frustrated,  good 
stuff  spoiled,  a  charred  and  emetic  result,  fit  only  for  cats 
and  dogs  !  "  Because  thou  art  lukewarm  and  neither  cold 
nor  hot,  I  will  spew  thee  out  of  My  mouth  ! " 

Life's  hot  ovens,  not  enough  tended,  are  ever  turning  off 
those  who  are  done  on  one  side  and  on  one  side  only, — half 
baked  characters.  These  men,  ( and  some  of  them  are 
women,)  a  composite  of  exaggeration  and  neglect,  are 
"  cakes  not  turned."  For,  fine  flour,  stout  yeast,  stiff 
kneading,  and  you  haven't  good  bread  unless  you  add  to 
these  careful  cooking.  "  These  ought  ye  to  have  done  and 
not  to  leave  the  other  undone  ! "  We  can  all  recall  enter- 
prises of  ours  that  fell  out  a  dead  loss  simply  because  we  did 
not  watch  our  ovens  ! 

Today's  ruined  batch  is  not  however  all  a  loss,  if  patient 
experience  works  betterment  tomorrow. 

The  blunders  of  this  world  are  mainly  the  result  of  heed- 
lessness. 

"  Evil  is  wrought  by  want  of  thought, 
As  well  as  by  want  of  heart." 

Where  malice  slays  its  thousands,  carelessness  slays  its 
myriads.    It  is  therefore  more  disastrous  than  malice  !   Con- 

112 


tinually  men  are  going  to  the  wall  because  they  do  not 
remember  that  opportunity  always  has  double  possibilities, 
evil  as  well  as  good.  Permission  to  make  a  great  success  is 
permission  also  to  make  a  great  failure.  Bad  handling  can 
wreck  the  sturdiest  ship,  mismanagement  waste  the  amplest 
fortune,  inadvertence  foil  the  best  occasions,  delay  slam  in 
our  faces  hope's  brightest  door, —  the  whole  life  fail  by  not 
turning  the  cake  all  ways  to  the  fire  !  Homely  and  whole- 
some then  the  precept,  that  the  result  after  God's  mind  is 
a  man  done  on  both  sides.  Thoroness,  which  is  thro-and- 
throness,  is  as  desirable  in  character  as  in  cookery.  And  so 
our  theme  is  a  warning  against  that  disproportion  which 
follows  both  excess  and  neglect.  All-aroundness,  balance, 
symmetry,  is  the  true  ideal  and  goal  of  an  available  man. 
He  loses  this  equipoise  and  sphericity,  and  becomes  gibbous 
and  lopsided,  who  is  willing  to  let  defects  offset  his  excel- 
lences.    He  has  the  moral  mumps  ! 

Even  distribution  is  the  task  of  the  true  life,  to  utilize  the 
maximum  of  energy  and  to  minimize  the  waste.  With  a 
loose  joint  and  poor  packing  the  mechanism  has  "  play  " 
and  there  is  friction  and  lost  motion.  Misspent  force  shat- 
ters its  tools.  If  the  enginery  does  not  fit  the  hull  there  is 
strain  and  danger.  The  steam  boiler  that  fizzes  at  all  its 
joints  wastes  steam  — -  the  boiler  overtaxed  bursts.  A  good 
equilibrium  lavishes  nothing  and  uses  all. 

For  the  differences  which  determine  and  distinguish  suc- 
cess or  failure  are  no  great  differences.  Not  toto  coelo,  but 
by  a  little  arc,  does  winning  change  to  losing.  Tall  men  are 
taller  by  inches,  not  feet.  It  is  in  the  final  ten  per  cent,  of 
possible  force  that  men  surpass  their  fellows. 

"  The  little  more,  and  how  much  it  is: 
The  little  less,  and  what  worlds  away  !  " 

In  wooing  or  in  war,  the  margin  wins.  The  last  few  grains 
turn  the  balance.  Three  of  four  degrees  of  the  barometer's 
thirty- two  register  the  calm  and  the  tornado.  A  "  Water- 
bury  watch  "  can  run  within  ten  minutes  a  month,  and  that 

us 


is  all  its  inferiority  to  the  chronometer  that  runs  within  ten 
seconds.  Seven  per  cent,  profit  and  the  business  succeeds; 
seven  per  cent,  loss  and  it  fails.     Fractions  decide  the  life  ! 

We  all  know  men  with  attainments  we  despair  of  matched 
with  weaknesses  we  despise,  who,  beating  the  air  with  one 
wing,  chafe,  struggle,  and  die  distanced.  He  will  get  further 
who  walks  on  two  feet  than  he  who  attempts  to  run  on  all 
fours !  The  upper  and  under  tensions  must  both  be  regulated. 
The  window  plant  must  be  turned  about.  For  a  complete 
beauty  the  tree  must  stand  in  the  open.  A  ship  that  has 
not  enough  keel  and  ballast  for  her  sail  is  "  crank,"  and  so 
is  a  man  who  leans  too  far  one  way  and  lacks  recovering 
power  !  If  suddenly  this  whirling  planet  were  to  slow 
down  and  cease  its  revolutions,  think  how  its  very  zones 
would  shift  !  —  the  side  towards  the  Sun  becoming  an  intol- 
erable Sahara,  the  side  away  a  more  than  Arctic  midnight, 
all  the  tribes  of  men  presently  peopling  only  the  narrow 
belt  of  permanent  twilight  !  But  what  the  Earth  has  from 
her  impartial  exposure  to  the  Sun,  that  must  we  get  by 
turning  our  entire  being  to  the  illumination  of  God. 

This  is  it  —  that  wholeness  must  fortify  all  ways.  Isolated 
virtues  are  not  virtue.  One  may  have  some  good  traits  yet 
not  be  good.  Energy  will  not  redeem  selfishness,  nor  beauty 
and  taste  condone  idleness,  nor  brilliancy  offset  scrofulous 
morals.  Keen  gifts  set  in  such  broad  defects  make  carica- 
ture. He  who  would  live  more  than  platitude  must;  know 
that,  far  from  averaging  force  with  fault,  high  desire  urges 
that  allegory  of  Holmes', — 

"  The  weakest  spot  must  stan*  the  strain, 
An'  the  way  to  fix  it,  ez  I  maintain, 
Is  only  jest  to  make  that  place  as  strong  as  the  rest." 

The  textural  quality  must  lie  under  the  surface  finish. 
Symmetry  is  more  than  bigness.  The  three-ply  man,  body, 
brain,  and  heart,  —  the  man  thinking,  feeling,  acting,  must 
have  an  equalized  development.  Terrestrial  and  celestial 
relations  must  not  quarrel,  This  triune  life  is  citizen  of  a 
114 


dual  world.  The  so-called  practical  and  the  so-called  ideal 
life  are  not  at  variance.  To  specialize  the  muscles  of  one 
arm  only  is  to  deny  the  right  of  the  other.  To  specialize 
any  one  capacity  or  realm,  and  not  to  generalize  that  part 
with  the  whole,  is  to  defeat  even  that  one. 

There  is  no  more  moving  warning  against  an  unnatural 
prematurity  and  an  unnatural  immaturity  than  the  auto- 
biography of  John  Stuart  Mill.  Scholarly  in  Greek  at  eight, 
a  close  student  of  history  at  ten,  he  wrote:  "  I  never  was  a 
boy,  never  played  at  cricket  —  it  is  better  to  let  Nature  have 
her  own  way."  It  was  monstrous:  but  more  monstrous  was 
the  way  in  which  his  father  taught  him  austere  doubt,  and 
for  bread  offered  him  scorpions  ! 

What  abnormal  schooling  is  that  which  concerns  itself 
only  with  the  objective  and  ignores  the  soul  that  sees, 
thinks,  and  lives  on.  Sufficient  reason,  adequate  end  and 
action  with  this  reference  —  these,  or  starvation.  The 
higher  education,  the  real  fulfilment  of  manhood,  must  be 
"  of  large  discourse,  looking  before  and  after."  The  great- 
est realities  are  the  innermost.  That  is  but  arrested  devel- 
opment which  thinks  that  man's  chief  end  is  to  know  things, 
rather  than  to  discern  personality.  To  do,  to  be  —  the 
realm  of  person  and  conscience  —  this  is  life.  Spiritual  navi- 
gation, too,  must  be  by  the  stars  of  Heaven;  and  of  them  all, 
brighter  than  Sirius  and  Alcyone,  by  the  Star  of  Bethlehem. 

"  When  science  reaches  forth  her  arms  to  feel  from  world 
to  world,"  she  still  must  cry  with  the  old  Psalm,  unless 
her  heart  is  frozen  in  conceit, —  "  My  soul  thirsteth  for  the 
living  God  !"  One  may  be  broad,  yet  be  shallow.  To  see 
horizontally,  but  be  blind  vertically,  is  to  usurp  ethics  by 
mere  esthetics  and  statistics  —  esthetics  which  fail  of  the  true 
beauty,  and  statistics  which  omit  the  supreme  fact.  Walter 
Scott's  last  word  to  his  son  Lockhart  was:  "My  dear,  be 
a  good  man  !  "  Devotion  to  the  highest  is  the  root  of  wis- 
dom. Upper  education  begins  not  with  abstruse  mathemat- 
ics and  abstract  speculation  and   all  the  array  and  analysis 

115 


of  objects,  but  with  the  lore  of  loving  lips  that  taught  us  — 

"  Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep; 
I  pray  Thee,  Lord,  my  soul  to  keep," — 

and  sealed  it  with  a  mother's  kiss  !  There  can  be  no  equity 
of  manhood  that  refuses  life's  inner  side  and  ultimate  ques- 
tion. The  thinking  and  the  doing  that  does  not  culminate 
in  God  is  truncated  and  thwarted.  Its  restlessness  is  its 
confession  of  poverty.  It  denies  the  heart  hunger  which  is 
either  a  prophecy  or  a  doom.  Nor  is  admission  of  the  God- 
side  of  life  enough,  without  a  joyful  submission.  One  may 
have  a  mind  furnished  like  a  great  library,  and  a  spirit  as 
hard  and  cold  as  that  library's  walls.  It  is  the  "  cake  not 
turned  ! "  For  what  a  distortion  is  it  to  know  and  not  to  be  ! 
—  never  to  arrive  —  to  be  mentally  finished  and  spiritually 
not  begun  !  Again  I  turn  you  to  that  one  complete  man- 
hood —  His,  in  Whom  we  are  to  "  grow  up  in  all  things  "  un- 
til we  come  to  the  complete  and  entire  man  —  to  the  meas- 
ure of  the  stature  of  fulness  This  only  is  accomplishment. 
True  education  is  a  ripening  —  a  seasoning.  It  endeavors 
to  evoke  many-sidedness  —  to  help  one's  mind  to  become 
public,  large,  hospitable.  It  is  the  glory  of  a  true  college 
course  that  it  does  not  purport  to  finish  its  scholar  but  to 
start  him  well.  It  is  not  a  sausage-machine.  Its  disciplines 
neither  attempt  nor  desire  to  rival  the  school  of  technology. 
It  takes  time,  and  therefore  must  often  hear  the  sneers  of 
haste-making  avarice.  Remember  Moses'  college  course  of 
forty  years.  To  surround  the  task,  to  compass  and  com- 
prehend it,  has  less  haste  but  more  speed. 

"  We  may  o'errun  by  violent  swiftness  that  which  we  run  at, 
And  lose  by  overrunning." 

Far  from  circumstances  jostling  mediocrity  to  the  top, 
they  will  throw  it  under.  Shake  a  measure,  and  see  the  big 
tubers  come  up!  In  this  exacting  and  sifting  time  the  small 
potatoes  go  out  of  sight.  There  is  a  plenty  of  demand  for 
those  who  will  be  all  they  can  be:  but  little  enough  for 

116 


seconds.  Well- tempered  tools  will  longest  hold  their  edge. 
The  steel  process  takes  longer;  but  then  you  get  steel.  "He 
that  will  have  a  cake  out  of  the  meal  must  needs  tarry  the 
grinding."  One  who  would  precipitate  himself  half-baked 
upon  an  unwary  world  will  ultimately  pay  the  freight.  The 
world  will  get  even  with  him.  It  will  not  willingly  set  its 
teeth  twice  in  a  raw  man.     He  isn't  cooked! 

You  have  not  taken  the  "  short  cut."  You  are  now  to 
advance  upon  the  same  broad  guage,  and  not  for  a  moment 
to  lose  the  wider  view  of  capacious,  generous  sympathies. 
You  will  be  available  not  because  you  have  been  here,  but 
because  you  have  absorbed  this  idea  of  being  many-bladed. 
You  cannot  lie  down  upon  past  privileges.  A  wider  view 
demands  not  less  intensity  but  more.  No  stencilled  A.  B. 
will  make  indeterminateness  efficient.  One  who  prides  him- 
self merely  because  he  has  had  advantages,  is  as  foolish  as 
one  who  prides  himself  because  he  has  not  had  them  !  Worth 
is  as  the  man  is.  "  A  man  is  worth  to  himself  what  he  is 
capable  to  enjoy,  worth  to  the  world  what  he  is  capable  to 
impart."  This  is  the  whole  lesson  of  Hosea's  oven  and  of 
the  "  cake  not  turned."  And  I  make  the  prayer, —  "  The 
God  of  peace  himself  sancitify  you  wholly,  and  may  your 
whole  body,  soul  and  spirit  be  preserved  entire,  without 
blame,  at  the  coming  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ." 

Men  of  the  Class  of  1902: 

In  the  name  of  the  College,  and  of  all  your  instructors 
there,  I  give  you  each  a  hearty  hand.  You  have  been  a  part 
of  Hamilton  in  days  of  progress.  Your  influence  has  been 
true  and  steadying.  You  are  still  to  be  a  part  of  the  College 
and  she  is  still  to  claim  your  concern  and  your  fidelity. 
Stand  by  her  true  advancement  as  long  as  you  live.  Honor 
her  imprimatur.  It  takes  good  men  to  be  leaders  and  to  be 
followers.  Stand  four-square  toward  life's  exactions  and 
awards.  Be  apart  from  that  cross-eyed  envy  which  puts  an 
emphasis  upon  equity  that  denies  liberty,  and  from  the  one- 

117 


eyed  greed  that  asserts  liberty  to  the  denial  of  equality. 
Hold  fast  to  that  equity  which  is  duty,  and  stand  for  it 
steadily,  even  tho  contra  mundum.  Dr.  Weir  Mitchell  has 
written  well  that  "  temperament  is  permanent  mood."  So 
set  each  mood  broadly  in  all  its  just  relations,  and  let  your 
joys  be  "  more  than  mere  animal  spirits."  Both  weed  your 
souls  and  plant  them,  both  plant  them  and  weed  them. 

It  has  been  deplored  that  "  There  are  no  great  men  now." 
It  is  not  true.  Real  greatness  is  absolute,  not  relative.  The 
ideal  is  not  a  few  exceptions,  but  a  high  average.  Success 
lies  not  in  surpassing  your  fellow  men,  but  in  surpassing 
yourself.  So  shall  you  lift  the  world,  which  is  harder  and 
nobler  than  to  surprise  it.  Recall  the  last  order  of  Col. 
Liscum  of  the  Ninth  Infantry,  falling  at  Tien-Tsin, —  "Keep 
on  firing  !  "  Always  there  is  a  firing  line.  Stand  there  un- 
der the  great  unseen  Captain.  That's  the  place,  and  as  to 
what  men  say,  no  matter, —  or  not  the  first  matter. 

"  They  out-talked  thee,  hissed  thee,  tore  thee; 
Better  men  fared  thus  before  thee, 
Fired  their  ringing  shot  and  passed, 
Hotly  charged,  and  sank  at  last. 

Charge  once  more  then,  and  be  dumb  ! 
Let  the  victors  when  they  come, 
When  the  forts  of  folly  fall, 
Find  thy  body  by  the  wall." 

And  last  I  cite  you  to  the  two  noble  examples  that  you 
have  had,  in  the  persons  of  those  honored  and  sturdy  men 
who,  while  your  course  on  the  good  hill  has  been  accomplish- 
ing, have  finished  theirs  on  Earth, —  Dr.  Hopkins,  Dr.  Ter- 
rett.  Carry  those  twin  memories  as  your  go  and  never  for- 
get that  they  were  your  friends  !  Separated  but  not  sun- 
dered, may  every  manly  affection,  pure  ambition,  generous 
labor,  that  you  have  shared  here,  bless  you  in  days  to  come. 
And  in  that  life  of  prayer  which  is  a  pledge  and  a  prophecy, 
may  your  friendships  still  be  a  unit  — 

"  Bound  with  gold  chains  about  the  feet  of  God." 
118 


PROBLEMS  OF  CHURCH  AND  COLLEGE 

TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS,  JUNE  21,  1903 
Hold  fast  that  which  thou  hast,  that  no  man  take  thy  crown.     Revelation  3:11. 

The  source  of  this  admonition,  and  the  stimulations  of  its 
great  inducement,  furnish  room  and  breath  within  which 
our  present  thought  can  move  freely.  Gladly  I  reckon  that, 
whatever  our  several  orbits,  we  have,  who  are  here,  a  com- 
mon solar  centre,  and  that  American  patriotism,  mental 
ardor,  and  that  faith  whose  counterproof  is  unflinching  fidel- 
ity, include  us  all  in  their  high  compulsions. 

I  must  be  satisfied  to  condense  and  to  suggest,  italicising 
some  chief  matters  which  urge  a  new  fortitude  toward  the 
exacting  privilege  of  a  time  whose  every  pulsation  is  so  stim- 
ulated. I  must  be  positive,  yet  assuming  no  infallibility. 
For  that,  there  are  too  many  counter-popes  here,  yet  hold- 
ing all  of  them,  I  trust,  a  pontifical  theory  of  indulgence, 
and  willing  to  shrive  my  errors.  If  you  love  the  tides  of 
truth,  you  are  assured  that  it  is  not  for  the  closet  alone  but 
for  "  free  and  open  encounter,"  not  merely  for  the  armory, 
but  for  the  tented  field  and  the  battle's  perilous  edge. 

I  speak  as  to  some  of  the  primary  present  problems  of  the 
College  and  the  Church.  The  Church  is  "  the  blessed  com- 
pany of  all  faithful  people."  Not  in  our  differences,  which 
all  are  secondary  and  provisional,  but  in  the  things  in  which 
we  agree,  are  we  of  the  one  Shepherd  and  the  one  flock.  An 
ebbing  faith  obtrudes  the  non-essentials; — flood- tide,  where 
the  ships  go  free,  buries  these.  It  is  not  that  this  polity  or 
that  argument  may  prevail;  but  that  the  masterful  love  of 
the  world's  Messiah  may  subdue,  inform,  confirm,  and  so 
bring  in  the  only  and  immortal  kingdom. 

All  stages  of  growth  are  new  occasions  of  fidelity  or  of 
default.  They  "  teach  new  duties  "  and  "  make  uncouth  " 
the  comprehensions  and  measures  which  they  displace.    Our 

119 


dislodgements  test  us  whether  we  have  rested  upon  unshak- 
able reality  or  upon  transient  form.  Winds  and  floods 
emphasize  the  rock.  Fire  searches  the  "  wood,  hay  and 
stubble "  of  traditional  interpretations.  Loyalty  stands 
sure,  and,  tho  with  modern  ordnance  and  smokeless  powder, 
it  is  still  a  convinced  and  expectant  manhood  that  wins  the 

%ht. 

Exigency  always  stimulates  the  brave.  In  a  rapid  and 
anxious  time  the  timid  flutter  and  cower,  the  tumid  bluster 
—  to  no  better  purpose;  but  they  who  "know  Whom  they 
have  believed  "  front  the  new  conditions  with  new  courage. 

New  conditions  there  are.  Each  day  the  world  compacts 
and  the  inter-relation  of  mankind  is  more  intense.  Provi- 
dence is  now  forcing  our  tardiness  to  realize  the  Orient,  and 
also  sternly  facing  us  toward  complex  and  culminating 
domestic  questions. 

Immigration  by  the  annual  half-million  and  more;  Africa 
within  our  doors,  with  the  involved  evasions  of  the  Constitu- 
tion in  which  the  old  barbarities  reappear;  the  tireless  mach- 
inations within  the  wooden-horse  of  Mormonism;  stolid 
illiteracy;  the  organized  tyrannies  of  greed  and  envy  — 
playing  with  fire;  the  overriding  of  equity  both  by  capital 
and  craftsmanship;  the  evasion,  the  barter,  the  trampling 
of  law;  the  congestion  of  the  city;  the  depraving  of  local 
government;  the  rape  of  the  ballot;  the  place-seeking  of 
scoundrels;  the  contempt  of  that  only  code  which  offers 
tired  man  fifty-two  holidays  in  the  year,  and  there  gives  his 
soul  and  God  the  right  of  way;  the  fungoid  development  of 
oligarchy  and  pseudo-aristocracy;  the  sins  of  "  pride,  idle- 
ness and  fulness  of  bread,"  which  sap  the  household  and  rob 
the  cradle;  amid  all,  the  epidemic  of  graft;  —  these  are  some 
of  the  problems  which  throw  deep  shadows  upon  the  moral 
map  of  our  country  and  our  time.  Over  all  these  a  sordid 
materialism,  whose  final  logic  installs  sense  and  sensuality 
above  spirit  and  conscience,  and  which  curses  this  world  by 
ignoring  another,   broods   portentous,  and  invokes  the  judg- 

120 


ments    of    Him  Whom   it   does    "  not   like    to   retain  in  its 
knowledge." 

And  the  problem  of  a  Church,  not  supine,  is  whether  it 
can  hold  its  own  !  No  !  If  it  hesitates  and  halts,  otiose 
and  senile.     Yes  !    If  it  sees  and  dares  rise  up,  vibrant,  to  — 

"Live  pure,  speak  true,  right  wrong, — 
Follow  the  King  !  " 

The  dilemma  is  Zeitgeist  or  Heiliger  Geist  —  the  age-spirit 
or  the  Lord's  !  For  soft  seduction  is  worse  than  fierce 
attack.  Piety  and  patriotism  alike  urge  a  reminting  of  the 
worn  and  debased  coin-current  of  alleged  Christianity, 
invoke  the  purging  of  nominalism  with  fire  and  fan,  demand 
the  bugle-call,  "  Who  is  on  the  Lord's  side  ?  "  exact  Eli- 
jah's alternative,  "  Follow  Jehovah,  or  Baal  ! "  Not  so 
much  do  we  need  revision  of  creed,  even  with  its  trenchency 
of  simplification,  as  we  need  renewal  of  credit,  of  consent  to 
the  standards  of  obedience.  "  Two  masters  "  are  one  too 
many!  The  attempt  fails.  Yes;  "The  time  is  come  for 
judgment  to  begin  at  the  house  of  God."  What  the  appar- 
ent Church  of  today  unconsciously  invokes  is  an  era  of 
persecution  —  the  apologia  of  martyrdom  !  For  merely  to 
"  hold  one's  own "  is  no  martial  ambition.  Napoleon's 
strategy  taught  well  that  "The  army  which  stays  in  its 
entrenchments  is  beaten."  The  defensive  postpones  defeat; 
but  only  the  offensive  wins.  So  Sedan  and  Metz,  so  Tren- 
ton and  Yorktown,  so  Lookout  and  the  Wilderness.  The 
enemy  marches  around  our  fixed  artillery.  He  circumvents 
us  and  takes  us  in  flank.  The  wisdom  of  our  war  needs 
the  tactics  of  aggression.     We  must  force  the  fighting. 

Unable  then  to  drift  up  stream,  two  things  are  demanded. 
First,  to  see  and  say  that  the  purpose  and  power  of  the  Christ 
covers  all  possible  human  relations,  that  His  "  mind  "  in- 
cludes all  these  issues  and  is  alone  their  solvent.  His  idea 
of  the  "  Church  "  is  not  an  ark,  but  a  life-boat  !  It  is  a 
life-saving  service,  or  it  is  none.  All  lives,  and  all  of  each! 
The  universality  of  the  Gospel  is  its  singularity.     It  means 

121 


everything  if  it  means  anything.  To  "exploit  it  selfishly 
is  to  deny  it  utterly.  It  is  not  abstract.  The  appli- 
cation of  the  non-partisan  ethics  of  Christ  to  all  that 
affects  the  society  of  men  is  His  exaction  of  our  day.  Under 
her  critical  opportunity  and  probation,  He  yet  forbears  with 
this  headstrong  America.  If  He  is  not  practicable  by  us, 
then  either  He  is  impossible  or  we  are,  and  then  one  must 
give  up  the  other  !  If  we  are  to  retain  Him,  the  Church, 
not  fatuous,  must  with  a  prophet's  voice  declare  that  the 
"  law  of  Christ "  makes  illegitimate  much  that  affects  to  be 
legal,  that  our  economics,  our  politics,  our  sociology,  must 
not  only  be  ethicised  but  evangelized  !  It  must  repent  of 
its  isolations,  its  temporizing,  its  idolatries,  and  no  longer 
deaf  and  dumb  and  blindly  cloistered,  deserve  and  regain 
the  respect  even  while  it  dares  the  hate  of  the  world  ! 
Ephatha! 

Salvation  is  not  in  the  passive  voice.  The  "  offense  of  the 
cross  "  is  not  ceased.  He  who  will  not  make  it  a  bauble, 
and  will  bear  it  to  the  place  where  Christ  bore  it,  shall  find 
unexplored  meanings  in  the  Gospel  !  Well  indeed  may  the 
frightened  sailors  of  time  cry  to  all  fugitive  and  snoring 
prophets, —  "  Awake,  O  sleepers,  and  call  upon  your  God, 
that  we  perish  not  ! " 

The  other  thing  is  to  go  —  out,  if  on.  Outreach  alone  is 
apostolical.  Narrow  individualism  defeats  itself  in  wasting 
its  virtues  upon  egotism.  The  Church  must  claim,  and  be 
worthy  to  claim,  far  more.  It  must  vindicate  its  appeal  to  be 
the  highest  fulfilment  of  human  longing  for  federation  in  God. 

Clinkers  in  your  house  furnace  are  not  fuel.  They  receive 
fire  but  add  nothing  to  it.  They  hinder,  and  they  must  be 
cleansed  out  and  a  new  fire  built  that  will  give  heat.  And 
the  Church  is  today  such  a  furnace,  clogged  with  red-hot 
slate  and  burned- out  slag.  It  must  be  dumped  and  re- 
lighted !  Better  Gideon's  few  than  the  bigger  company  of 
those  who  won't  fight,  who  take  the  oath  and  their  rations 
and  take  nothing  else  !     What  is  an  army  good  for  that  is 

122 


busy  only  to  burnish  its  buttons,  to  improve  its  barracks, 
and  to  sing  ( at  a  stand-still )  "  Onward,  Christian  Soldiers  ! " 
—  never  resisting  unto  blood  ! 

In  many  of  our  villages  four  or  five  feeble  and  sickly  con- 
gregations compete  impotently,  dividing  the  body  of  Christ 
with  their  unimportant  specialties  and  shivering  over  their 
'isms'  —  a  handful  of  coal  in  each  separate  stove  !  Much 
good  home  missionary  money  is  wasted  in  maintaining  this 
unfruitful  rivalry.  In  our  cities  the  elite  saints  affect  the 
avenues,  while  the  storm-centres  of  population  are  not  really 
attempted.  In  emphasizing  incidentals,  and  in  succumbing 
to  commercial  and  so-called  social  standards  which  Christ 
spurned,  the  Church  but  loads  the  avalanche  ! 

Organized  originally  for  direct  human  help,  it  crushes  its 
ministers  with  proxies,  and  substitutes  services  for  service  in 
the  cottage  and  the  alley.  It  handles  a  crucifix  rather  than 
practicing  the  cross,  and  is  much  sophisticated  by  the  spec- 
tacular fallacy  of  place  and  day  and  the  opus  operatum  of 
dignified  make-believe.  Always  this  moderatism  resists  the 
Holy  Ghost,  the  more  touchy  as  it  is  the  more  self-satisfied. 
And  all  the  while  whole  areas  of  those  for  whom  the  Lord 
bled  are  thinking, —  "  No  man  cares  for  my  soul  !  "  In 
the  vestibules  of  many  a  theoretical  sanctuary  the  Great 
Mechanic  waits  wearily  and  shares  with  lonely  hearts  their 
cup  of  pain.     "  I  was  a  stranger  and   ye  took  Me  not  in  !  " 

Nor  is  this  irony.  I  know  there  are  true  hearts,  open 
hands,  swift  feet:  but  oh,  they  are  too  few  !  The  Church 
that  willed  and  that  went,  that  called  nothing  its  own,  that 
knew  the  "  fellowship  of  suffering,"  that  was  fed  to  the  lions, 
was  the  Church  that  once  "  shook  all  the  mighty  world." 
"  Stir  up  Thy  strength,  O  God,  and  come  and  save  us  "  — 
from  ourselves  !  Upon  the  verge  of  religious  bankruptcy, 
the  boundless  help  of  the  actual  Christ  calls  us  to  a  deeper 
vital  movement  of  conscience  than  ever  yet  stirred  our  land. 

To  retranslate  Him  in  afmodern  Pentecost,  to  reincarnate 
His  love  right  where  men  are  striving  and  grieving,  to  wit- 

123 


ness  brotherhood,  to  wear  the  red  cross,  this  is  the  only 
mission,  and  obedience  under  it  the  only  problem,  of  the 
Church.  For  this  alone  it  was  founded  and  exists.  Solve 
this,  not  by  discussion  but  by  direct  action,  and  all  is  solved. 
The  out-of-door  Christ,  the  people's  Redeemer,  would  open 
to  such  a  Church  the  windows  of  Heaven  and  break  to  it 
the  bread  of  angels  !  The  Church  that  suffers  is  the  Church 
that  reigns. 

Go  forth  to  the  unbidden.  By  your  humanity  prove 
again  His  divinity  and  mastery,  and  society  would  upheave 
in  response.  Yes,  the  comfortable  and  complacent  who  now 
forsake  us  because  they  do  not  believe  that  we  believe  what 
we  say,  who  see  no  moral  difference  between  us  and  them, 
would  crowd  our  doors,  aware  at  last  of  their  poverty  and 
their  calling,  and  seeking  the  way  of  the  simple  and  abun- 
dant life  !  Such  a  movement  cannot  work  from  the  top 
down,  nor  from  the  outside  in.  In  so  far  as  the  Church 
makes  religion  but  a  phylactery  and  evades  the  intense  prac- 
ticality of  Christ,  the  world  laughs.  That  the  laughter  is 
hysterical  but  makes  it  the  more  piteous.  A  crisis  !  Christ 
will  have  all  or  nothing.  Yes,  or  No  !  Of  a  truth  it  is  a 
day  to  rebuild  the  altar,  and  with  a  mighty  cry  to  God,  to 
lay  ourselves  thereon. 

The  problem  of  the  College,  as  it  concerns  that  of  the 
Church,  is  what  remains.  Nor  is  the  modulation  abrupt. 
The  Church  must  make  its  reasonable  appeal  to  and  by 
prepared  men.  Not  merely  for  its  ministry,  but  for  what 
Pope  Leo  has  well  called  the  "  apostolate  of  the  laity,  " 
education  is  an  essential  demand  of  its  strength.  Histori- 
cally there  is  a  profound  interdependence  between  the 
American  College  and  the  American  Church.  John  Har- 
vard and  the  founders  of  Yale,  Tennant  and  Wheelock  and 
Kirkland  and  Wayland  and  Finney  and  Hopkins  —  these 
were  men  whose  idea  was  elementally  Christian.  They 
loved  the  Lord  God   "  with  all  their  mind."      The  moral 

124 


and  vital  relation  of  College  and  Church  I  hold  to  be  larger 
and  fuller  than  direct  ecclesiastical  control  ;  but  by  indirect 
I  do  not  mean  remote,  I  mean  informal.  Reciprocity  and 
affinity  are  ample,  and  they  are  indispensable.  The  College 
idea  and  ideal  has  been  thoroly  Christian,  and  so  may  it 
ever  be.  Were  the  College  to  deny  the  Great  Teacher 
it  would  be  to  bite  the  Hand  that  has  fed  it  and  led  it. 
Under  the  generosity  of  the  Evangel  the  College  purports 
the  general  distribution,  not  as  opposed  to,  but  as  distin- 
guished from,  the  local  condensation  of  higher  education. 
Between  the  scope  and  methods  of  the  University  and  the 
College  there  should  be  no  hostility,  but  there  should  be 
a  precise  discrimination.  Each  is  needful  and  distinct. 
Neither  should  envy  nor  vaunt. 

Advanced  investigation  is  necessary,  and  excellent  are  the 
foundations  that  foster  this.  Toward  this  the  adapted  Col- 
lege graduate  may  well  be  prompted.  But  there  should  be 
no  composition  nor  confusion  01  the  two  disciplines.  By 
whatever  indirection,  to  seek  to  foreshorten  the  more 
generic  work  of  the  College  proper,  to  despise  that  anneal- 
ing of  personality  in  which  the  time  element  is  so  import- 
ant, to  urge  immaturity  upon  technical  research,  is  short- 
sighted and  raw,  and  it  panders  to  a  haste  which  depreciates 
the  quality  of  both  schools.  To  truncate  the  College 
course,  to  sacrifice  process  to  speed,  that  half-ripe  persons 
may  be  rushed  upon  the  market,  to  base  the  doctorate  upon 
the  tasks  which  belong  to  the  bachelorate,  or  to  elide  these, 
is  to  shear  away  strength.  The  bland  device  ravels.  It 
plays  Procrustes. 

For  one  College,  just  a  College  and  distinctively  such,  I 
speak  —  one  that,  however  others  may  denude  and  disinte- 
grate themselves,  will  (I  trust  and  believe)  remain  faithful  to 
the  idea  of  those  solid  beginnings  from  which  all  later 
edifices  of  special  skill  shall  better  build.  Radically  conser- 
vative of  this,  if  it  shall  be  singular,  singular  it  will  cheer- 
fully be,  undiverted  from  making  mental  character  the  foot- 

125 


ing-course  of  mastership.  It  will  not  scramble  to  follow  the 
bellwethers  of  novelty  into  the  bog  of  miscellaneousness ! 

For  mental  training,  decried  only  by  sciolists,  is  primary. 
Language,  logic,  literature,  life  —  are  its  quadrivium.  The 
broad  horizon  of  these  nurtures  the  true  synthetic  spirit 
which  grasps  final  meanings  —  which  compresses  the  tire 
upon  the  wheel.  To  study  what  man  is,  which  is  psychol- 
ogy; what  proof  is,  which  is  mathematics  and  logic;  what 
man  has  done,  which  is  history  and  law;  his  instruments, 
which  are  the  languages;  what  he  has  said  best,  which  is 
literature;  his  environments,  which  are  the  materials  of  the 
five  laboratories;  what  he  is  for,  which  is  patriotism,  ethics, 
religion, — all  these  sciences  unite  in  that  humanistic  and 
liberal  education  for  which  it  has  stood,  and  for  which  this 
College,  at  least,  will  stand. 

This  definite  concentration,  not  upon  abstract  subjects 
but  upon  the  subjective  man,  realizes  him,  and  compacts  his 
personality  at  every  step. 

Seeking  inspiration  as  well  as  instruction,  it  is  concerned 
with  the  influential  quality  of  its  teachers  as  well  as  with 
the  quantities  of  their  knowledge  —  the  impartation  of  broad 
comprehension  and  commanding  motive;  for  true  education 
is  the  influence  of  life  upon  life.  The  genuine  College  is 
bent  to  discover,  to  awaken,  to  excite  noble  emulation;  to 
make  for  sanity  of  mind  and  body;  to  teach  the  soul  to 
swim;  to  rub  men  close,  as  life  will  rub  them;  to  promote  an 
accuracy  and  promptitude  that  is  not  pedantry,  and  a  vision 
that  is  not  dreaming;  to  develop  intellectual  poise  and  reach, 
along  with  cogency  of  expression  and  oral  leadership;  not 
to  lose  the  unit  in  the  mass,  to  stimulate  a  common  moral 
sentiment,  which  shall  shame  the  dullard,  the  superficial,  the 
unsocial,  and  repudiate  the  snobbish,  the  profligate  and  the 
false.  And  the  College  which  does  this  can  never  be  small 
to  the  eyes  that  look  for  quality  rather  than  noisy  bulk. 

All  this  lifts  youth  toward  manhood,  in  its  most  plastic 
and  formative   years.     Unto   this   an  eager  College  gathers 

126 


local  material  that  else  would  largely  go  ungathered,  aids  it 
to  seek  and  to  find  itself,  and  impregnates  it  with  an  ardor 
at  once  human  and  public. 

Unconditionally  and  boldly  be  it  said,  that  the  historical 
and  natural  scope  of  the  College  recognizes  that  this  is  God's 
Earth,  that  the  furniture  of  the  world  is  not  all  of  it,  and 
that  man  is  God's,  to  guide  and  to  complete.  Nothing  at 
last  is  merely  secular.  Every  fact  and  act  is  moral  and  may 
be  holy.  The  song  and  romance  of  College  days  is  to  be 
sanctified  by  that  which,  while  it  impels  toward  nobility  and 
quenches  passion,  leads  up  to  the  motives  of  a  service  which 
is  a  worship,  and  which  constrains  and  satisfies  the  inmost 
heart.  Buckle  (  and  he  has  had  a  sinister  school  of  imita- 
tors )  heaped  many  heterogeneous  and  partial  instances 
about  the  two  propositions;  first,  that  nations  are  the 
creatures  of  circumstances,  and  next,  that  the  only  progress 
is  the  intellectual.  Let  Athens,  Alexandria,  Constantinople, 
answer  him,  in  their  age-long  crouching  under  the  dirty  foot 
of  the  Turk  !  No  !  Character  makes  men  and  nations, 
and  its  salvations  are  more  than  knowledge.  Character  is 
reason  schooled  to  think  hard  and  straight  into  the  ultimate 
constructive  standards  of  duty,  and  obediently  to  choose 
them  with  all  their  enduring  implications. 

The  truths  of  religion  are  to  be  taught,  and  the  potency 
of  those  scriptures  which  focus  upon  the  one  complete  Man. 
Then  let  the  College  speak  of  right,  and  keep  wide  open  that 
Book  without  which,  well-pondered,  none  can  be  thoro  in  the 
world's  history  and  significance,  or  be  rooted  and  grounded 
in  the  real  life.  Out  of  its  intensative  scrutiny  shall  come 
a  larger  interpretation  of  the  stages  by  which,  on  from  Ur 
to  Egypt,  all  leads  up   to  the  central  and  enduring  Christ. 

Our  challenge  is  that  here  lies  the  secret  of  Time  —  its 
sore  travail  and  its  shining  goal.  Only  the  human  is  the 
good;  but  only  the  divine  is  the  human.  All  other  theory 
is  neither  beautiful  nor  rational.  The  age  that  forgets  this 
is  a  self-confused  and  wandering  age.     The  age  that  denies 

127 


it  is  intellectually  bastard  and  blighted.  Not  in  the  terms 
of  ecclesiasticism,  but  in  those  of  undefiled  relation  to  the 
spotless  and  ever-outgoing  Vitalizer  of  Time,  not  as  the 
scribes  but  as  the  disciples,  let  our  educations  be  drenched, 
saturated,  fulfilled,  exalted,  with  essential,  practical  Chris- 
tianity !  To  the  College  which  maintains  that  "  the  fear  of 
the  Lord  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom,"  the  Church,  the  peo- 
ple, must  look  for  the  cadets  of  truth  and  devotedness. 
The  one  problem  of  the  College  is  to  hold  fast  her  integrity 
to  the  supreme  Teacher  of  Men.  But  this  also  is  the  one 
problem  of  the  Church.     Both  problems  are  at  last  one. 

Men  of  the  Class  of  1903: 

The  history,  the  horizon,  the  hopes  of  this  Hamilton  of 
ours  are  dear  to  us  together.  You  have  grown  here  in  that 
loyalty  to  fine  and  firm  things  which  is  not  a  mere  impres- 
sionist mood,  but  which  is  of  the  will  and  the  heart.  Never 
fear  but  that  this  loyalty  will  always  find  the  work  it  is  fit 
for.  You  have  been  taught  that  curiosity  and  tenacity  are 
completed  in  reverence.  You  have  been  taught  to  honor 
Him  Who  is  the  true  Author  and  Finisher  of  knowledge. 
Stupidity  is  ungodly  and  ungodliness  is  stupid.  If  the  fear- 
less and  magnanimous  love  of  truth  as  the  guide  of  duty  is 
to  live  in  you,  your  ideals  must  be  spiritual  not  mechanical. 
Fight  your  battles  hard  and  fight  them  in  the  fear  of  God. 
Remember  that  "  a  just  man  falls  seven  times,  and  riseth 
again."  A  right  heart  never  can  say  Die.  To  your  College 
that  is,  and  that  is  to  be,  I  pledge  your  hearts.  The  ark  is 
coming  home,  and  as  the  men  of  Beth-Shemesh,  reaping  in 
the  valley,  lifted  up  their  eyes  and  rejoiced,  so  all  of  us  say 
Praise  and  Amen  !  By  your  manhood  and  its  influence  you 
are  to  honor  this  old  Hill  of  ours.  Always  may  the  voice 
live  in  your  souls  that  has  been  our  word  today, —  "  Hold 
fast  that  ye  have,  that  no  man  take  your  crown  !  "  Con- 
quest now,  and  in  God's  time  the  coronation.  Athletes  of  a 
mightier  field-day, —  Hail  to  you  all  ! 

128 


THE  GLORIFICATION  OF  SERVICE 

TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS,  JUNE  26,  1904 
I  magnify  my  office.     Romans  11 :  13. 

The  Revision  reads,—  "  I  glorify  my  minis  try."  The 
word  is  really  the  word  "  diaconate,"  or  "  deaconship." 
"  Deacon,"  in  Greek,  is  the  title  of  a  voluntary  servant, 
as  distinguished  from  doulos  —  a  bondservant.  One  offers, 
the  other  is  compelled.     A  deacon  is  a  willing  servant. 

Transferring  the  very  word,  we  should  reread  some  f amil 
iar  phrases  after  this  sort ;  — 

"  He  that  is  greatest  among  you  let  him  be  your  deacon." 

"  I  am  among  you  as  the  deacon." 

"  Made  us  able  deacons  of  the  New  Testament." 

"  Fill  full  thy  diaconate." 

"  Satan's  deacons  fashion  themselves  as  deacons  of  right- 
eousness." 

"  Deaconing  of  the  strength  which  God  supplieth." 

The  service  makes  the  office.  Too  much  we  think  of 
office  as  place  and  position;  Paul  stated  it  as  work.  We 
describe  it  as  a  tenure,  he  declared  it  as  a  task;  not  some- 
thing to  inhabit  but  something  to  do;  not  a  thing  snug,  easy, 
well-paid,  but  an  exacting  opportunity.  Officialism  puts 
the  officer  forward,  magnifies  itself:  service  puts  forward  the 
offices,  the  duties,  for  which  alone  the  office  exists.  In  the 
parable  of  Christ,  "  Occupy  till  I  come  "  does  not  refer  to 
tenancy  but  to  activity.  Be  busy  with  the  charge,  keep 
the  capital  moving,  use  it. 

So  then  here  is  the  generic  principle  of  fidelity,  which  ever 
is  concerned  not  to  exhibit  a  title  but  to  fulfil  a  trust. 

When  Paul  thus  stated  his  purpose  and  interpreted  his 
commission,  he  spoke  sincerely.  He  was  not  bragging. 
Services  were  his  credentials  as  a  man  "  sent  forth."  His 
errand  is  his  end,  all  that  he  is  or  has  is  but  a  means  toward 

189 


that.  So  he  claims  nothing  for  himself,  everything  for  his 
message.  Dress  parade,  canonical  fuss,  formal  precedency 
—  he  scouts  them.  Weapons  not  epaulettes,  fulcrum  not 
pedestal.  His  terrible  zeal  makes  any  ecclesiastical  martinet 
preposterous.  Pomposity  and  punctiliousness  are  the  refuge 
of  small  men,  who  when  their  station  is  too  large  for  them 
stiffen  their  littleness  with  starch  and  mannerisms. 

Paul's  harness  could  dispense  with  trappings,  seeing  that 
it  was  for  draught,  not  show.  Garbed  as  the  ordinary  man, 
not  tricked  out  in  special  attire  and  vestment,  quick-handed, 
ready  to  rough  it,  familiar  with  long  hours  and  short 
rations,  intimate  with  danger  and  deprivation,  inured  to  the 
rod  and  the  mob,  without  salary  or  vacation  and  supporting 
himself  with  his  tent-needle,  in  prison  and  in  pain  uttering 
one  devoted  testimony,  alert,  daring,  incorrigible,  thrust 
aloft  like  a  rocket  by  his  own  fiery  heart — here  once  for  all 
was  a  man  I  Calling  himself  the  least  worthy,  from  Damas- 
cus to  Spain,  on  two  continents  and  in  three  languages,  he 
gave  the  word  "Apostle"  its  undying  glory. 

"If  your  sword  (said  the  Spartan  mother)  is  too  short, 
step  closer  to  your  enemy,"  and  oh  how  swiftly  this  eager 
soul  hastened  to  close  quarters,  how  rapidly  with  every  man 
he  made  Christ  the  theme  and  the  issue  !  How  surely  he 
did  his  errand.  What  havoc  would  that  stout  blade  make 
now  of  our  trivial  and  tinsel  distinctions,  social  and  philo- 
sophical. With  what  compulsions  of  nobility  this  leader  of 
leaders  packed  with  results  the  one  life  God  gave  him  to 
live  !  Service  was  his  business;  not  warbling  himself  to 
death  upon  a  pink  cloud,  but  handling  the  troubles  and  dan- 
gers of  every  soul  he  could  get  at,  meeting  the  epidemic  of 
the  world,  penurious  of  not  one  resource  so  as  to  get  the 
thing  done ! 

Thus  he  was  an  example  that  every  man  is  to  be  a  dea- 
con, called  to  ministry,  ordained  to  labor,  that  God's  will 
may  be  done  on  Earth.  Capacity  to  serve,  diligence  to 
serve,    this    is   the  only   earldom.      Labor   is   life.     A   true 

130 


Church,  a  true  society,  is  a  peerage  of  servants.  Office  is 
to  be  an  active,  not  a  passive,  noun.  A  deacon  is  a  doer. 
To  consent  to  be  described  by  "  cloth  "  is  to  submit  to  a 
bitter  epithet.  Intense  usefulness  is  the  only  honorary  de- 
gree; all  else  may  but  veil  nakedness  under  ornamental  rags. 
Only  servants  are  saints.     Deacons  all  ! 

Now  the  glorification  of  service  lies  in  not  seeking  great 
things  for  self.  That  is  an  undersized  ambition.  Like  the 
owl  it  has  more  feathers  than  flesh,  and  its  beak  is  better 
than  its  vision.  Like  the  peacock,  its  plumage  is  a  poor 
apology  for  its  voice.  It  is  the  little  bird  that  does  the  sing- 
ing,—  the  lark,  the  thrush.  Officiousness  is  not  effective- 
ness. Love  is  what  thrills  and  inspires,  and  "  love  seeketh 
not  its  own."  If  the  place  is  greater  than  the  man,  he  will 
rattle  in  it.  He  advertises  the  misfit.  For  bulk,  men  may 
stand  as  much  alike  as  barrels,  but  the  empty  ones  sound 
loudest.  Better  be  a  full  keg  than  an  empty  hogshead  ! 
The  full  ships  ride  deep.     "  The  shallow  murmur." 

It  is  true  that  every  place  shrinks  or  stretches  to  fit  its 
occupant.  A  man  of  moral  size  has  a  displacement  that 
crowds  back  the  world.  A  compressed  purpose  has  a  "  spe- 
cific gravity  "  all  its  own.  Every  person  has  an  opportunity 
to  read  himself  into  his  calling,  to  create  his  part.  Sothern 
took  a  subordinate  personation  and  made  Lord  Dundreary 
the  main  thing.  It  is  the  will  to  push  the  work  that  digni- 
fies and  adorns  any  station.  There  are  two  or  three  best 
razors  in  every  dozen,  tho  stamped  by  the  same  maker. 
The  difference  is  not  in  material,  but  temper.  In  a  man, 
temper  is  choice  —  the  will. 

Many  a  young  man  (it  is  an  undergraduate  notion)  thinks 
there  is  no  room  for  him,  that  all  the  good  places  are  pre- 
empted. It  is  not  true,  except  to  the  flabby.  The  world, 
like  Diogenes,  is  always  looking  for  the  man.  The  right 
men  are  always  scarce.  For  those  who  glorify  service  there 
is  a  demand  far  beyond  the  supply.  How  scarce,  for  in- 
stance, is  the  strong  candidate  in  politics  !     Unavailabilities 

131 


there  are  in  plenty.  The  machinery  of  affairs  waits  for  the 
power.  Will  is  electricity  —  it  moves  all  wheels.  The 
handle  awaits  the  hand.  The  purpose  to  do  the  thing  un- 
derlies ultimate  mastery,  and  this  is  the  wisdom  that  is  will- 
ing to  postpone  its  rights  rather  than  its  duties,  and  to  keep 
its  bills  even  if  it  loses  its  receipts.  One  maximizes  service 
by  minimizing  self,  finds  life  by  losing  it,  the  paradox  of  all 
loftiest  manhood.  One  can  have  the  praises  he  seeks  — 
men's  or  God's :  but  the  lower  recompense  may  be  the  price 
of  the  higher,  and  the  approval  that  ripens  last  is  worth  the 
waiting.  It  is  a  vice  of  our  impatient  time  that  so  many 
wish  to  begin  at  the  top  and  not  at  the  bottom.  They  seek 
to  get  rather  than  to  give.  The  unrest  in  artisanship  is  but 
one  symptom  and  instance.  Men  are  trying  to  evade  ap- 
prenticeship, the  steady,  disciplining  details  of  preparation. 
But  it  was  by  declining  Saul's  armor  that  David  showed 
himself  one  who  would  at  last  come  to  be  able  to  wield 
Goliath's  sword. 

It  is  not  the  carved  scroll  that  is  the  secret  of  the  old 
Stradivarius :  but  the  delicate  and  sure  adjustment  of  the 
simple  inner  posts  and  props.  And  his  cunning  who  makes 
the  violin  alive,  is  the  perfect  work  of  patience  and  pains. 
To  offer  what  will  merely  pass  confesses  mediocrity.  The 
best  men  are  those  who  exact  of  themselves  the  best  work, 
not  that  which  will  barely  "  do  ".  Results  reward  that  ser- 
vice which  counts  nothing  unimportant,  and  which  reckons 
every  day  as  good  as  any  that  ever  was  or  will  be.  To  bor- 
row from  our  betters,  to  follow  the  greatest,  we  must  per- 
ceive that  what  they  most  valued  was  serviceability,  not 
show.     And  this  purpose  held  fast 

"  Shall  find  the  toppling  crags  of  duty,  scaled, 
Are  close  upon  the  shining  table-lands 
To  which  our  God  Himself  is  Moon  and  Sun.'* 

A  man  in  Western  New  York  realized  the  demand  for  a 
first-class  hammer.  He  studied  the  tool,  and  with  no 
patent,  by  sheer  excellence  conquered  the  market.     "  How 

132 


long  ( one  asked  him )  have  you  been  making  hammers  ?  " 
"  Twenty-eight  years."  "  Well,  by  this  time  you  must 
know  how  to  make  a  pretty  good  one."  He  answered,  "  I 
never  made  a  pretty  good  hammer,  I  make  the  best  ham- 
mers in  the  United  States." 

"  I  remember  (  said  a  wealthy  snob  to  a  young  lawyer 
who  was  steadily  climbing )  when  you  used  to  black  my 
father's  boots."     "  Didn't  I  do  it  well  ?  "  was  the  reply. 

Yes,  the  servant  is  the  master.  The  lowlier  the  fidelity, 
the  loftier  the  life.  There  is  no  bargain-counter,  no  ten- 
cent  store,  where  character  can  be  cheapened.  Not  by 
memorizing  aphorisms  about  success,  but  by  cheerfully 
serving  God,  day  in  and  week  out,  do  we  touch  the  apos- 
tolic life.  The  nearest  thing  done  in  the  truest  way  is  that 
which  angels,  and  even  devils  too,  respect,  and  what  God 
will  own.  This  concentration  is  what  finds  its  aim,  while 
mere  sporadic  mood  scatters  like  an  old  bell-mouthed  gun, 
more  honored  in  the  breech  than  in  the  muzzle. 

As  a  race-horse  responds  to  a  skilful  driver,  and  as  a 
thorobred  dog  loves  to  point  for  a  hunter  who  kills  with 
either  barrel,  so  men  are  glad  to  give  "  the  tools  to  the  man 
who  can  use  them." 

It  is  a  story  forty  years  old  —  how  when  the  flank  was 
turned  at  Cedar  Creek  and  all  was  panic  and  disaster,  there 
came  down  the  turnpike  like  a  cloud's  shadow,  rowelling, 
riding,  flying,  a  resistless  will  !  "  The  other  way,  boys  ! 
Face  the  other  way  !  We're  going  back."  The  rout  was  a 
rally,  the  rabble  a  charging  front, — "  Sheridan  !  Sheridan  !" 
—  and  Jubal  Early  went  the  way  he  came.  Such  a  leader 
one  man  can  be.  Almighty  God  wants  such  to  stem  the 
flood,  to  reform  the  broken  lines,  to  face  the  discouraged 
"  the  other  way,"  by  the  impact  of  a  determination  about 
whose  strength  ten  thousand   men  gather   to   the  renewed 

%ht. 

When  the  Wesleys  confronted  the  Deism  of  the  eighteenth 
century  with  the  Gospel,  it  shook  and  died,  and  the  leaden 

133 


age  breathed  life  again.  Never  was  there  a  really  great 
movement  or  achievement  on  this  Earth  into  which  some 
one  had  not  put  his  total  capital. 

Men  of  the  Class  of  1904  : 

I  speak  to  you  as  to  those  of  whom  I  am  persuaded 
things  that  accompany  a  manhood  at  once  devoted  and 
reverent. 

The  moral  obligations  of  college  men  to  make  their  train- 
ing efficient  in  "  the  stream  of  life  "  cannot  compel  you  too 
sternly,  nor  invite  you  too  ardently.  It  is  a  gallant  thing  to 
live  hard  and  strong.  A  man  whose  ambition  is  dedicated 
to  his  God  will  shirk  no  demand,  nor  reckon  less  than  noble 
any  of  the  penalties  of  high  leadership.  "  Go  in  anywhere, 
(  said  a  general  to  one  of  his  colonels  )  —  you'll  find  lovely 
fighting  along  the  whole  line  ' '  !  By  and  by  we  will  hang 
your  swords  somewhere  on  the  walls  of  our  templed  Hill  up 
there.  We  grudge  you  no  sacrifice,  we  spare  you  not  one 
pain,  we  give  you  now  to  God,  to  time,  to  your  country,  to 
men,  and  only  pray  that  you  may  pay  the  full  price  of 
immortality  without  misgiving  or  any  backward  look. 

Let  the  thought  that  rules  these  verses  of  our  own  Clinton 
Scollard  sing  for  us  all; — 

"  Tears  for  the  weaklings  !  but  for  those  who  fought 
And  perished  nobly,  upon  land  or  wave, 
No  lamentation,  no  dark  draperies  brought, 
No  sad  songs  for  the  brave  ! 

"But  rather  jubilation  —  peal  on  peal 

Of  joy-bells, —  Hope's  white  lilies  'neath  the  Sun, — 
Because  they  died  with  sacrificial  zeal, 
Their  patriot  duty  done  !  " 

You  go  forth  from  a  College  radically  conservative  to 
educate  men,  "  practical  "  to  develop  spirit,  to  stimulate  the 
whole  mind  and  manhood,  striving  not  to  issue  a  product 
smitten  with  the  intellectual  mumps  of  the  partialist,  or 
addicted  to   the  exploitation  of  vagaries.     Respect  the  hall- 

134 


mark  by  never  resting  upon  it.  It  is  a  permission  and  a 
commission  to  rouse  and  spur  you.  Let  your  memories  be 
a  tonic,  not  a  sedative.  Law,  politics,  science,  art,  letters, 
the  chair  of  the  teacher  or  editor,  that  pulpit  which  Spur- 
geon  called  "  the  Thermopylae  of  Christendom," —  all  these 
are  opportunity  for  you  to  make  a  brilliant  and  benign 
record  or  a  ghastly  failure.  God  calls  every  man  of  you 
into  the  ministry  —  to  serving.  "  Take  heed  (  O  Archippus ) 
to  the  ministry  which  thou  hast  received  in  the  Lord,  that 
thou  fulfil  it."  Glorify  your  diaconates  with  a  vow  and  a 
vigor  that  shall  never  know  the  futilities  and  the  fatigues  of 
self-idolatry  !  Follow  that  flag  whose  field,  white  as  the 
light  is,  bears  a  crimson  cross  !  Pledge  yourselves  to  the 
utmost  that  God  and  men  can  get  out  of  you.  Crowd  your 
place,  whatever  it  may  be,  with  personality.  Empty  your- 
self into  your  task  as  the  founder  pours  the  molten  metal 
into  every  crevice  of  the  mold.  Seek  always  an  issue  with 
right  in  it  and  fight  the  Devil  with  fire.  Make  every  wrong 
your  quarrel.  Say  your  word  boldly,  do  your  deed  bravely, 
then,  "  Good  and  faithful  servants,—  ENTER  "  ! 


135 


DEMOCRACY  AND  CHRISTIANITY 

TO  THE  GRADUATING  CLASS,  JUNE  25,  1905 

As  free,  and  not  using  your  freedom  for  a  cloke  of  wickedness.     1  Peter  2:  16. 

Real  freedom,  rightly  used. 

Before  Rome  was,  or  Greece,  Moses  outlined  and  at- 
tempted a  system  of  government  by  and  for  the  people.  It 
laid  great  stress  upon  the  personal  partnership  of  each  man, 
It  was,  on  its  human  side,  elementally  republican.  The 
initiative  lay  with  the  responsible  units.  Their  coordina- 
tion was  to  be  affirmed  thro  chosen  and  answerable  repre- 
sentatives. It  based  upon  the  two  unchanging  human  re- 
quirements —  individuality  and  federation.  Thus  Israel  was 
to  be  the  "  prevailer  ".  But  the  idea  has  prevailed,  and  will, 
tho  Israel  lapsed  from  it.  Moses  survives.  He  was  the 
prophet  of  a  social  inspiration  which  slowly  dawns  upon  the 
modern  world.  It  is  not  even  yet  ripe:  but  it  is  ripening. 
The  Old  Testament  is  not  antiquated;  it  is  the  people's 
book,  the  primer  of  freedom.  To  that  tribunal  the  fiery 
Hebrew  prophets,  who  thundered  the  divine  demand  for 
righteous  law,  for  liberty,  for  equal  rights,  cited  their  genera- 
tions and  subpoenaed  monarch  and  priest. 

For  Israel  had  swerved  from  its  popular  prerogative  and 
taken  up  with  a  borrowed  subserviency.  When  they  de- 
manded a  king  their  political  decay  had  begun.  Samuel  an- 
nointed  Saul  under  a  solemn  protest  that  royalty  would  be 
the  disappointment  it  proved.  The  acclaim  was  a  confessio 
paupertatis.  Bulk  them,  and  Israel's  kings  were,  and  all 
kings  have  been,  a  sorry  lot.  History  also  "  poureth  con- 
tempt upon  princes."  Their  alleged  "  divine  right  "  has 
been  a  grotesque. 

Seeking  the  deepest  estimate  of  man  and  his  associate 
life,  distinguishing  makeshift  means  from  primary  ends, 
essential  humanity  from  its  temporary  furniture  and  uten- 
136 


sils,  let  us  measure  those  two  mighty  and  mutual  words  which 
spell  the  whole  hope  of  mankind  —  Democracy,  Christianity. 

I  shall  today  draw  heavily  upon  your  patience,  but  even 
so  the  time-limit  permits  only  the  broadaxe  and  adze.  I  can 
only  hew  it  rough  and  rapidly.  Anyone  is  welcome  to  the 
chips:  but  if  you  cannot  refute  you  must  not  refuse. 

Mankind  is  man  kinned  —  brothered.  Paul's  phrase, 
"  the  whole  Fatherdom,"  affirms  an  integral  race,  of  one 
origin,  anatomy,  concern,  probation  —  "  one  far-off  divine 
event."  "  One  spirit,  one  body  "  is  the  full  precept  of  that 
New  Testament  which  daringly  contemplates  and  deter- 
minedly intends  the  rearrangement  of  the  world.  Under 
and  unto  God  the  Gospel  instinctively,  unswervingly,  pur- 
poses this  infrangible  unity  of  man.  It  is  the  one  alterna- 
tive opposing  all  present  sedition  and  secession.  Either 
solidarity,  cohesion,  making  way  steadily,  by  steps  however 
slow,  over  the  stupidities  of  selfishness;  or  at  last  a  sterile 
race  and  a  shattered  star  !  It  opposes  congregation  to 
segregation.  Its  specialty  is  not  parts:  but  the  whole.  Its 
goal  is  mankind. 

And  the  world  process  is  toward  the  full  realization  of 
human  homogeneity.  Time  is  pedagogic  of  this.  History  is 
the  record  of  this  schooling.  The  evolution  is  racial,  and 
forces  us  to  study  geography  and  ethnology  anew  —  to  think 
internationally.  Artificial  demarcations  are  proving  imprac- 
ticable. The  static  gives  way  to  the  dynamic.  Economics 
has  to  be  concerned  with  the  whole  Earth's  housekeeping, 
and  politics  and  diplomacy  are  finding  themselves  defeated 
by  mere  provincialism.  Philanthropy,  in  its  deepest  sense, 
whether  as  equity  or  as  religion,  is  revealing  as  the  bond 
that  transcends  date  and  region.  Yes,  it  is  "  an  increasing 
purpose."  Sociology  is  ethics.  Society  is  man  capitalized, 
and  "  the  life  of  each  individual  represents  a  social  value." 

Whatever  else  was  provoked  out  of  him,  Thomas  Paine, 
when  he  wrote  the  "  Rights  of  Man,"  was  an  irrefutable 
prophet.       Fundamentally    that    document    is    true.      Its 

137 


audacity  angered  all  Tories:  but  in  spite  of  reactionaries  and 
the  recrudescence  of  the  worship  of  mere  force,  the  Tory  is 
obsolescent.  The  air  of  freedom  was  in  Paine's  book,  and 
time  has  justified  it.  The  bold  experiment  of  1789  in  Amer- 
ica has  legitimated  man  and  refuted  the  doctrine  of  his 
perpetual  nonage. 

Constructed  for  and  environed  by  his  fellows,  man  finds 
association  inevitable.  Ways  and  means  are  but  by-laws, 
tentative,  provisional,  to  be  amended,  to  be  abandoned; 
association  remains.  And  the  definition  and  practical  order- 
ing of  man's  relation  and  commonweal,  by  whatever  devices, 
wiser  or  worse  —  this  is  government. 

However  they  have  stuttered  or  fumbled,  all  its  experi- 
ments have  somehow  sought  for  fair  and  fruitful  terms  under 
which  men  might  live  together.  Tho  the  deed  has  often 
denied  the  tradition,  well-being  has  been  the  end  claimed  — 
the  general  good. 

That  government  must  be  the  best  which  seeks  and  pro- 
motes the  utmost  welfare  of  all  its  people,  holding  equity  as 
its  supreme  law.  As  a  means  to  any  other  end  it  is  stulti- 
fied and  condemned.  The  seat  of  authority  in  the  State 
rests  on  right:  but  right  is  equity  and  never  aught  else,  and 
equity  is  service.  For  human  service,  and  for  this  only, 
government  is  a  trustee. 

Noting  some  of  the  main  forms  with  which  men  have  ex- 
perimented, or  been  experimented,  name  first  that  of  which 
tribalism  was  a  rudiment  ( exploited  at  last  by  its  strongest 
man  ),  Autocracy.  It  is  the  rule  of  one,  centering  all  in  him- 
self,—  L'etat  c'est  moi, —  absolutism.  Sometimes  it  is  me- 
diately bureaucratic,  as  Turkey  and  Russia  are;  but  at  last 
it  wields  the  despotism  which  is  misanthropy,  the  throne  for 
its  own  sake,  the  individuality  of  the  many  suppressed,  what 
is  lavished  upon  the  man  depriving  the  people.  Man,  if  he 
thinks  ( and  shall  he  not  think  ! )  ferments  and  rages  under 
this  frustration.  Therefore  is  Russia  today  like  a  burning 
mine  —  like  a  fuse  whose  fire   eats  steadily  to  the  blast  ! 

138 


"  One  red  star  ! "  Apologists  for  the  regime  tell  us  that  the 
non-ruling  classes  of  Russia  are  "  unfit  to  rule."  But  are  the 
ruling  classes  fit  ?  Is  any  fit  who  is  willing  or  prefers  that 
any  should  remain  unfit  ?  When  the  sleeper  wakes,  when 
the  unfit  come  to  their  own,  wo  to  those  who  have  unfitted 
them  !  When  the  ice  of  this  great  Neva  loosens,  when  the 
real  Russia  finds  itself,  then  alas  for  those  who  have  built  in 
denial  of  the  summer  !  Who  is  there,  save  the  attorneys  of 
oppression,  to  bewail  the  dawn  ? 

"  If  freedom  be  not  a  word  that  dies  when  spoken, 
If  justice  be  not  a  dream  whence  men  must  wake, 
How  shall  not  the  bonds  of  the  thralldom  of  old  be  broken, 
And  right  put  might  in  the  hands  of  them  that  break  ?" 

Next,  Monarchy  —  a  term  of  varied  limits,  and  compris- 
ing little  or  much  responsibility.  Sometimes  all  the  real 
control  is  with  those  who  fondly  retain  the  terminology  of 
subjection  as  an  ornamental  anachronism,  and  are  willing  to 
pay  the  bills  !  But  think  what  things  have  come  to  pass 
between  the  frank  brutality  of  Henry  the  Eighth  and  the 
obedient  suavity  of  Edward  the  Seventh  !  The  people  have 
learned  that  it  is  their  England.  The  Tudors  and  the 
Stuarts  are  gone.  Great  Britain  (  as  Andrew  D.  White  has 
recently  remarked )  "is  simply  a  republic  with  a  monarchi- 
cal head  lingering  along  on  good  behavior." 

Plutocracy  —  the  rule  of  wealth  —  the  power  of  money- 
holders  as  such.  It  is  not  formally  proclaimed,  but  it  is 
strong  and  subtle  to  subvert  men.  Its  silent  arithmetic 
does  not  indeed  necessitate,  but  makes  possible,  oppressions 
not  less  actual  because  insidious.  Its  "  community  of  inter- 
est," widely  diverse  from  the  interests  of  the  community, 
has  ere  now  ruined  great  states.  It  instinctively  resents  the 
mandate  and  mandamus  of  the  people.  Mammon,  with 
cowardly  stealth,  supplants  that  commonweal  which  is  so 
much  more  than  wealth.  Favoritism  is  its  market.  It 
translates  man  as  a  commodity  and  has  sway  by  indirect 
bribery.     Blind  Plutus  ! 

139 


Oligarchy.  It  is  "  the  few"  in  power,  whether  a  clique,  a 
bureau,  a  machine,  or  a  ring.  It  saps  the  general  strength 
and  despoils  representation  of  reality.  Its  odium  is  its  as- 
sumption and  its  irresponsibility.  Its  inner  wheels,  its  coali- 
tions and  coteries,  befool  the  ballot,  and  by  its  supple  trick- 
eries the  peerage  of  freemen  is  undermined.  Officialdom  is 
one  of  its  forms.  Slates,  stolen  primaries,  and  the  star- 
chamber  deals  of  state  committees  are  some  of  its  familiar 
features. 

Aristocracy  then, —  a  fair  term,  "the  rule  by  the  best";  but 
practically  it  means  the  self-elect  at  their  own  appraisal  — 
a  close  corporation  of  opportunists.  Or  it  illustrates  "  the 
fine  irony  of  an  entailed  nobility."  The  taint  of  heraldry  and 
the  attainder  of  mere  hereditary  privilege  is  superciliousness 
and  snobbery  and  the  dry  rot  of  these,  the  insolence  of  class 
prerogative  and  the  inhuman  proscriptions  of  caste.  "  The 
best,"  by  all  means:  but  not  the  self-styled  such,  nursing 
their  cheap  exclusiveness  and  affecting  to  be  the  chauffeurs 
of  the  world.  The  day  of  the  House  of  Lords  is  passing  in 
those  lands  where  parliamentary  law  has  become  the  register 
of  the  people's  liberty.  The  Electoral  College  is  of  this 
piece,  an  antiquated  absurdity,  tolerated,  but  sure  to  break 
into  flying  dust  under  any  strain  of  honest  application.  Our 
method  of  incubating  United  States  senators  is  another  illus- 
tration of  this  bad  leverage,  making  them  the  creatures  of  a 
camarilla.  It  will  some  day  be  reformed  in  the  interests  of 
responsibility. 

As  to  Anarchy.  It  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  Its  ideas 
cancel.  Putting  caprice  for  reason,  it  denies  law,  which  is 
the  organ  of  liberty,  for  the  sake  of  that  license  which  is 
liberty's  parody  and  defeat.  Its  "  red  laughter  "  is  madness. 
It  is  the  "  cloke  of  wickedness  "  and  would  crush  freedom 
under  the  absolutism  of  the  mob.  It  is  the  anti-gospel  of 
"  Every  man  for  himself  !  "  In  the  name  of  "  the  law  of 
liberty  "  organized  mankind  smites  this  adder.  For  freedom 
is  not  the  absence  of  restraint:  it  is  the  absence  of  false  re- 

140 


s train t.  All  violence  jeopards  equal  social  justice.  But  re- 
member that  to  deny  that  any  man  is  a  part  is  to  incite  him 
to  forget  that  he  is  only  a  part.  Suppression  begets  explo- 
sion. Men  unvindicated  are  the  material  for  men  vindic- 
tive. If  a  system  breeds  nightmares  it  will  breed  their 
riders  ! 

As  to  Theocracy;  it  is  actual  while  God  lives,  else  all  hopes 
for  the  creature  are  "  built  on  stubble."  The  ethics  of  col- 
lective humanity  derive  at  last  from  Him  only.  Its  reach 
does  not  alter  the  rule.  All  politics  is  either  applied  ethics 
or  it  is  shorn  of  rationality;  but  ethics  is  concerned  with 
universal  relation.  The  right  divine  is  never  delegated  to 
any  vicegerent.  It  is  fulfilled  in  the  common  consent  of  free 
consciences,  and  is  plagiarized  by  kingcraft  or  priestcraft. 

At  last,  Democracy,  the  people's  self-government,  a  gen- 
eral trusteeship  of  sovereignity.  All  personality  dignified  by 
that  accountable  share,  with  all  its  sanctions,  which  He 
intended  who  is  its  source  and  its  strength.  "  Legitimate 
governments  ( says  President  Hadley )  are  administered  in 
the  interests  of  the  whole  body  politic."  See  the  ultimate 
implications  of  this;  for  the  prime  interest  of  each  several 
man  is  to  realize  and  to  exercise  the  fullest  rational  free- 
dom, to  be  a  mechanic  of  the  nation,  not  a  mechanism,  —  to 
move  toward  that  corporate  activity  where  none  is  lord, 
none  underling,  to  "  walk  at  liberty "  within  that  law  of 
which  he  is  a  part. 

Democracy  may  be  an  abused  term  for  the  tyranny  of 
multitudes,  a  mass  deflected  by  passion  and  by  demagogs 
who  pander  to  it,  flattering  while  they  defile :  but  then  the 
self-control  of  the  people  is  by  its  means  thwarted  of  its 
ends,  and  the  true  equation  is  lost.  For  the  ideal  rests  upon 
the  diffusion  of  that  conscience  which  is  fulfilled  in  "  work- 
ing no  ill  to  its  neighbor,"  and  which  resents  for  him  and 
for  itself  the  two  tyrannies  of  constriction  and  of  excess. 
But  mark  that  the  cure  for  the  perversion  from  the  ideal  is 
not  less  democracy,  but  better. 

141 


I  maintain  that  Christianity  is  radically  inter-human,  that 
it  is  no  respecter  of  appearance,  that  its  elemental  program 
is  to  shake  every  middle  wall  of  partition,  that  it  knocks  in 
God's  name  at  every  closed  door,  that  it  necessarily  implies 
Democracy.  As  strenuously,  I  maintain  that  its  precepts 
are  the  only  foundation  upon  which  Democracy  has  logically 
developed,  or  upon  which  it  can  thrive  and  endure. 

For  implicitly  the  Son  of  Man  rests  His  case  upon  the 
right  valuation  of  men.  He  and  none  other  has  exalted  the 
peoples  into  freedom,  His  autonomy  secures  theirs.  His 
theorem,  if  demonstrated,  makes  the  unconstrained  and 
abundant  life  its  corrolary.  "  Free  grace  "  announces  the 
"  square  deal  "  and  bids  every  man  stand  up  and  be  counted. 
It  was  the  "  good  news  "  that  God's  love  leaves  no  one  out, 
that  a  total  mankind  has  "  eminent  domain  "  as  against  all 
"  adverse  possession."  And  Democracy,  for  and  by  the  peo- 
ple, admits  no  pre-emption  of  authority.  It  emancipates 
into  the  right  to  seek  the  best,  while  it  enjoins  the  duty  to 
offer  the  most.  Privilege  and  obligation  interpret  each  the 
other.  Thus  in  a  republic  the  delegated  agents  of  the  peo- 
ple are  "  public  servants  "  —  stewards,  accountable  to  the 
authority  which  commissions  them.  In  any  other  term  they 
are  defaulters  and  forfeit  their  credentials.  Democracy  and 
Christianity,  the  human  expression  and  the  divine  inspira- 
tion, make  up  together  the  final  experiment  of  time.  To- 
gether they  fare  or  fail;  but  if  these  fail  all  fails  !  The 
bankruptcy  of  one  involves  the  other.  Unless  men  can  learn 
to  reason  deeply,  both  as  to  the  basis  and  the  scope  of  rights 

—  then  cataclysm.     Law  and  love  —  "  one  and  inseparable  " 

—  or  the  deluge!  "Liberty  and  union"  mean  all  that 
Webster  meant,  and  mean  far  more.  The  whole  probation 
of  mankind  is  as  to  whether  he  will  seek  that  true  common- 
wealth of  souls  which  banishes  all  false  claims :  but  this  is 
Democracy  !  Of  such  a  new  society  the  Gospel  of  Christ  is 
the  plan  and  specification,  and  to  conquer  this  ideal  into 
actuality  is  the  one  task  and  travail  of  this  Earth.     We  are 

142 


shut  up  to  it.  Nothing  else  is  left  to  try;  and  so,  to  doubt, 
to  flinch,  to  surrender,  is  to  desert  the  cause  of  both  God 
and  Man  ! 

There  are,  I  am  aware,  some  sickly  and  sentimental  dis- 
senters from  the  genius  and  goal  of  the  peoples'  calling, 
whispering  or  whining  their  rejection  of  the  substantive 
claim  of  man  as  man.  This  disregard  for  the  many,  this 
reluctancy  from  the  burden  of  the  problem,  is  ordinarily 
traceable  ( when  not  merely  academic  )  to  an  absentee  spirit 
which  assumes  to  distrust  what  love  of  ease  dislikes.  It 
never  preaches  a  full-width  righteousness.  Its  complacent 
apathy  would  postpone  everything  for  the  sake  of  the  status 
quo.     Affecting  a  silken  piety,   it  forgets   that   all  modern 

Erophets  —  the  Luthers,  Wesleys,  yes,  the  Tolstois,  have 
een,  in  effect,  great  champions  of  the  submerged  and  for- 
gotten, uplifting  aspiration  in  the  hopeless,  seeking  that 
which  is  lost,  and  restoring  that  cardinal  proof  of  the  Mes- 
siah, "  the  poor  have  the  Gospel.' '  These  superficial  invesr 
tors  in  the  present  as  it  is,  will  take  no  stock  in  the  future  as 
it  should  be.  Like  Lot's  wife,  they  interpret  the  majo 
considerations  of  life  by  the  minor.  For  them,  too,  "  the 
offense  of  the  cross  is  not  ceased."  But  in  the  face  of  an 
awakening  world  they  are  as  imbecile  as  they  are  futile. 

But  also  there  are  such  as  applaud  democracy  without 
perceiving  either  its  exactions  or  its  guarantees.  Let  none 
praise  democracy  as  an  end  in  itself,  and  ignore  the  obliga- 
tions attending  its  permissions.  It  is  justified  not  in  its 
apparatus  but  in  its  purpose;  not  in  its  negative  protest 
but  in  its  constructiveness;  in  that  steadfastly  regulated 
equity  which  distributes  the  burden  as  well  as  the  benefit. 
Consideration  for  all  others,  as  bound  with  them  "  in  the 
bundle  of  life,"  is  its  basilar  strength:  but  this  is  also  "  the 
law  of  Christ."  The  more  powerful  it  is,  the  more  does  it 
require  the  delicate  control  which  only  that  supreme  love 
can  furnish  which  "  seeketh  not  its  own."  Either  altruism 
or  absolutism;  for  there  is  no  logical  half-way. 

143 


Can  man  learn  that  reciprocity  which  lifts  all  around  ? 
Can  he  realize  that  every  personality  has  a  birthright,  that 
civil  and  religious  freedom  are  two  sides  of  but  one  thing, 
that  low  forms  of  society  and  low  conceptions  of  God  go 
together  ?  If  not, — if  anything  but  a  cluster  of  preferred 
creditors  offsetting  a  bulk  of  subservients  is  a  fond  dream; 
if  the  Nazarene  was  an  impracticable  enthusiast,  emotional 
rather  than  rational;  if  great  populations  are  to  be  ruled 
from  without  rather  than  from  within;  if  the  martial  is 
better  than  the  domestic  and  the  industrial,  —  then  all  falls 
back  into  the  arms  of  mere  force;  then  half-developed 
peoples  instead  of  being  taught  self-direction  are  to  be  the 
prey  of  robber  strength;  then  "  the  gospel  of  blood  and 
iron"  is  to  prevail;  then  the  idea  of  the  old  Roman  empire 
is  to  re-conquer  the  Galilean  !  This  is  the  dilemma:  right- 
eousness or  cunning  power;  Nitzsche's  man  or  Christ  !  The 
last  question  is  whether  this  Earth  is  to  be  a  home  or  a 
menagerie  ! 

Now  any  government  is  at  a  given  time  as  strong  as  it 
has  purposes  worthy  to  be  believed  in,  and  no  stronger. 
Perceived  or  not,  the  bottoming  idea  of  democracy  is  the 
utmost  diffusion  of  two  things  —  authority  and  responsi- 
bility. All  of  its  hopes  are  reducible  to  the  balancing  of 
these  two.  All  of  its  phases  and  attempts  here  are  judged. 
This  duality  is  the  law  of  its  life.  Within  it  each  whole 
man,  and  because  a  man,  is  to  "  count  one."  Persons  are 
its  units,  and  their  union  is  to  be  without  confusion  or  seces- 
sion. Its  divisor  exactly  matches  its  dividend,  and  the 
quotient  is  one.  A  division  of  labor  which  is  distorted  to 
mean  "  You  labor  and  I  divide "  is  not  democracy.  So 
then,  in  this  joint  severalty  where  every  man  should  count 
one,  not  a  half,  not  two,  every  man  should  be  fitted  to  count 
one  !  Democracy  must  vigilantly  demand  and  strive  toward 
this  fitness  of  its  units,  and  stabs  itself  by  neglect  of  it. 

The  ballot  affirms  the  indisputable  right  of  each  integer. 
Only  so  is  it  valid.     Its  qualified  intelligence  is  its  security 

144 


that  it  shall  always  be  counted  as  one,  and  never  less  or 
more.  Less  it  were  tyrannized,  more  it  were  tyrannical. 
The  only  real  voter  is  the  independent  voter,  and  to  seduce 
or  to  intimidate  him  violates  manhood.  Degradation  is  dis- 
franchisement. Democracy  agrees  with  Christianity  to  say 
that  every  man  should  count  one,  and  that  because  he 
should  he  shall  !  Nothing  else  ever  believed  this,  or 
declared  it,  or  attempted  it.  But  the  tools  are  for  the  task. 
No  theory  works  itself.  This  one  cannot  be  carried;  it 
must  walk.  It  must  wrench  itself  out  of  dullness  and  delay. 
It  must  lift  itself  away  from  the  appeal  and  stress  of  mere 
passion,  and  cease  to  be  pleased  with!  flattery  and  fireworks. 
"  Use  your  freedom."  It  is  not  an  end  but  a  means,  a  con- 
dition of  opportunity,  a  capacity.  It  makes  normal  action 
possible;  but  this  must  be  fulfilled  in  the  wisdom  and  the 
will  to  do  ! 

Therefore  education,  the  tutoring  of  men  in  their  duty  to 
secure  their  rights.  Provision  for  this  is  self- protection. 
Liberty  thinks,  enslavement  only  feels.  Ignorance  breeds 
political  bastards.  Every  election  that  is  not  a  farce  is  an 
appeal  to  opinion  and  purpose.  Thus  the  people  say,  We 
will  have  it  so,  and  so.  The  greatest  state  shall  be  that  one 
with  the  greatest  ratio  of  voters  who  think  clearly  and  reso- 
lutely, and  who  will  not  be  browbeaten  or  cajoled.  This  is 
pivotal.  The  minority  which  thinks  will  at  last  outnumber 
those  who  only  pretend  to.  By  thinking,  man  in  both 
senses  comes  to  his  majority. 

Let  this  be  seen  in  the  rise  of  Humanism.  It  was  a  part 
of  the  subsoiling  of  the  world  for  the  seed  of  Democracy. 
Freedom  breathed  thro  the  new  learning.  Letters  were 
Republican.  It  was  the  mind  of  man  pawing  to  get  free. 
Thus  the  school  is  the  arsenal  of  the  people's  rights,  and  a 
College  is  a  battery  of  men  !  The  specialty  of  education  is 
liberty;  for  it  rests  upon  "  the  right  assessment  of  what 
constitutes  human  value." 

In  the  last  analysis,  Democracy  rests  its  dictum  upon  the 

145 


bench  of  justice.  The  court  embodies  the  people's  con- 
science as  to  equity.  Its  decree  registers  their  deliberation 
and  their  relf-restraint.  It  becomes,  under  God,  their  ulti- 
mate affirmation  and  refuge.  It  is  the  final  institute  of 
liberty. 

Under  that  fraternity  of  men  which  the  evangel  mapped, 
the  Ishmaelitish  spirit  recedes.  The  history  of  human 
arrangements  unfolds  this  generic  man- right.  This  is  the 
developing  purpose  of  the  parturient  years.  Thro  slow  eras, 
or  in  convulsive  epochs,  the  impulse  has  pushed  as  by 
hydraulic  pressure.  The  paramount  description  of  a  man 
is  that  he  has  a  passport  to  all  the  freedom  he  can  use,  and 
to  an  equal  chance  to  show  how  much  that  is.  He  shall 
resist  whatever  would  steal  or  crush  his  fair  share  of  it;  for 
to  yield  to  such  dispossession  is  to  deny  the  nature  God 
gave  him.  Well  said  Lincoln,  that  foremost  modern  repre- 
sentative of  the  fine  old  family  of  man,  in  1856,  "  They  who 
deny  freedom  to  others  deserve  it  not  for  themselves,  and 
under  the  rule  of  a  just  God  can  not  long  retain  it." 

Liberty  is  menaced  today  in  its  own  household  by  pride 
of  power,  by  lust  of  empire,  by  a  somnolent  and  unprotest- 
ing  Church  with  little  else  than  soft  words  for  Mammon; 
but  what  shall  it  profit  democracy  if  it  gain  the  whole  world 
and  lose  its  own  life  !  To  enable  and  ennoble  '  every  crea- 
ture under  heaven  '  toward  his  fullest  possibilities  is  the 
formative  idea  of  a  just  society,  and  it  should  remove  all 
that  opposes  this,  by  pick  or  by  powder.  Democracy  and 
Christianity  have  it  in  common  that  we  profess  both  and 
practice  neither,  except  tentatively  and  with  limiting  reser- 
vations. Neither  has  yet  been  fully  worked.  Men  fear  and 
resent  both  the  law  of  love  and  the  law  of  liberty;  but  alike 
they  must  either  be  applied  or  abandoned. 

To  reduce  its  limitations  to  the  lowest  terms,  to  exalt  its 
universality,  liberty  is  to  be  delivered  both  from  those  who 
assume  to  monopolize  and  from  those  who  dare  degrade  it; 
for  to  rule  and  to  serve  are  the  two  halves  of  the  divine  pur- 

146 


pose  that  all  men  shall  be  "  kings  and  priests  unto  God," 
and  this  purpose  can  be  interpreted  neither  by  the  aristocrat 
nor  the  mob. 

In  quoting  Bismarck's  characteristic  saying,  that  "  After 
all  a  benevolent,  rational  absolutism  is  the  best  form  of  gov- 
ernment," Matthew  Arnold  replies:  "  The  one  fatal  objection 
to  it  is  that  it  is  against  nature,  that  it  contradicts  a  vital 
instinct  in  man  —  the  instinct  of  expansion.  The  impulse 
of  democracy  is  identical  with  the  ceaseless  effort  of  human 
nature  itself."  Hear  !  Hear  !  indeed.  Always  to  be  chosen 
for,  rather  than  to  choose,  is  arrested  development,  pro- 
longed childishness.  Nations  arriving  at  their  majority  put 
away  this  nursing  bottle  of  royalty,  this  theory  of  unchange- 
able babyhood,  which  offers  tin  toys  to  adults  and  spanks 
bearded  men  !  Littoral  Canute  can  not  scold  back  the 
untamable  tides  —  sceptre  and  spectre  depart  together.  Let 
the  chess-game  picture  the  play  of  titular  rank.  There  are 
kings  and  consorts,  castles,  bishops  ( ever  diagonal ), 
knights  erratic,  pawns  as  the  servitors  and  spoil  of  these; 
and  for  a  parable  the  white  always  with  the  first  move. 
But  '  the  order  changeth.'  The  day  of  the  pawn  comes. 
In  testudo,  he  advances  to  the  king  row,  turns  transfigured, 
and  gives  checkmate  !  "  Democracy  (  said  Lowell )  is  that 
form  of  society  in  which  every  man  has  a  chance  and  knows 
that  he  has  it." 

What  is  our  "  Monroe  doctrine  "  but  this,  that  we  mean 
that  our  democracy  shall  not  have  its  influence  narrowed  by 
the  proximity  of  any  other  theory  of  the  people  ?  To 
maintain  this  theory  of  the  people  undamaged,  and  to  hold 
its  vantage  unimpaired,  we  would  fight  ( tho  God  forbid  the 
emergency )  till  all  the  seas  ran  red  !  It  was  with  this 
instinct  that  we  lifted  Cuba  from  the  dunghill  to  place  an 
unquenchable  star  upon  her  brow,  still  keeping  faith  with 
freedom. 

The  Gospel's  idea  accords  with  the  idea  of  Democracy. 
Their  aims  are  cognate,  their  purposes   mutual.     They  join 

147 


in  that  view  of  inter-human  rights  of  which  International 
Law  is  the  logical  resultant.  They  alike  resent  "  every  yoke 
of  bondage,"  and  intend  that  freedom  which  is  the  clearing- 
house of  mankind.  Each  seeks  the  greatest  quantity  of  the 
highest  quality,  and  demands  that  none  shall  be  outside  of 
law,  none  beneath  it,  none  above  it.  They  "  come  to  make 
the  best  the  world  knows  native  to  the  humblest." 

The  Son  of  Man  is  man's  Man  !  He  arraigns  all  despot- 
isms, and  threatens  every  divisive  artificiality,  every  defraud- 
ing, every  treachery  to  the  human  cause.  Before  Him  every 
antiquated  lie  of  caste  stands  disheveled,  every  usurpation 
shudders,  and  every  "  prisoner  of  hope  "  leaps  up  with  joy. 
"  All  for  each  and  each  for  all,"  is  the  bold  and  beautiful 
charter  which  is  sealed  with  His  cross.  "  And  the  govern- 
ment shall  be  upon  His  shoulder  ! " 

Democracy  is  not  "  the  multitude  in  power  with  no  ade- 
quate ideal  to  elevate  and  guide":  but  it  is  the  people 
guided  and  elevated  as  common  shareholders  in  a  celestial- 
ized  manhood.  It  is  indigenous  to  Christianity,  and  is 
implied  by  that.  Dependence  upon  God,  independence  of 
all  insalutary  duress,  interdependence  as  fellows  and  friends, 
these  are  the  three  signals  of  what  the  "  Leader  and  Com- 
mander of  the  peoples  "  purposes  and  will  perform.  They 
stamp  all  temporizing  expedients  with  paresis.  To  deny 
them  is  both  apostacy  from  the  faith  and  barratry  against 
the  ship  of  state. 

All  gain  in  appreciating  what  whole  democracy  both 
includes  and  excludes,  has  been,  consciously  or  not,  an 
appreciation  of  Christ's  idea  of  man.  Painfully  it  has  pene- 
trated the  banal  policies  and  sodden  politics  of  the  world, 
attended  by  harsh  reactions  and  bitter  doubts,  but  despite 
the  appalling  follies  of  those  who  "  promised  liberty,  while 
themselves  the  servants  of  corruption,"  it  has  continued  and 
will  conquer. 

The  timid  dread  the  birth-pangs  of  change,  and  the  near- 
sighted refuse  to    think  beyond   the  status   they  have  cap- 

148 


tured:  but  the  dynasty  of  the  few  becomes  decrepit  and 
nigh  to  vanishing.  The  Magnificat  was  the  annunciation  of 
a  new  society.  It  enfolded  an  apocalypse:  "  He  hath  put 
down  the  mighty  from  their  seats,  and  exalted  them  of  low 
degree."  "  The  Desire  of  all  nations  "  makes  all  classes 
"  dangerous  classes,"  and  those  the  most  so  who  absent 
themselves  from  concern  for  that  cause  of  the  people  which 
widens  and  deepens  with  each  newest  day,  and  before  whose 
"  awful  rose  of  dawn "  the  lanterns  of  the  groping  years 
grow  dim. 

For  Democracy  this  America,  this  people's  land  !  Hither 
they  come  who  would  escape  the  mortmain  of  stole  and 
throne.  We  are  building  better  than  we  know,  and  repeat 
Columbus,  "  who  only  sought  a  way  and  found  a  world." 
Our  freedoms  are  not  ours  to  seclude.  If  we  forget  His 
purpose,  wide  as  the  Earth  is,  Who  begat  these,  we  abandon 
their  security.  To  evade  the  duty  is  to  despise  the  blessing. 
If  this  Sampson,  shorn  and  blind,  lays  hands  upon  those  two 
commandments  which  are  the  pillars  of  a  divinely  human 
society,  he  shall  indeed  "  make  sport  for  the  Philistines," 
but  in  catastrophe  and  common  burial  ! 

Before  the  envious  fallacies  of  both  ermine  and  rags, 
America  is  to  retract  nothing  of  her  earlier  faith  in  the  sov- 
ereignty of  God  and  in  the  sanctity  of  man,  His  child.  She 
is  still  the  pioneer  of  the  cause  of  man,  not  to  exploit  a  con- 
tinent but  to  uplift  a  race.  The  enlargement  of  men  from 
both  slavery  and  license  is  pressed  upon  us  by  our  double 
faith.  We  "  shall  walk  at  liberty  because  we  seek  His  pre- 
cepts," "  as  free  and  not  abusing  freedom."  And  shall  we 
not  thus  move  ? 

"  Humanity  with  all  its  fears, 
With  all  the  hopes  of  future  years, 
Is  hanging  breathless  on  thy  fate." 

Well  said  Grover  Cleveland,  at  St.  Louis,  "  It  is  a  solemn 
thing  to  belong  to  a  nation  favored  of  God." 

149 


Men  of  the  Class  of  1905: 

Stand  up,  then,  and  stay  up,  to  meet  the  possibilities  of 
these  big  years  with  conscience  and  backbone.  Hear  the 
high  trumpet.  It  calls  you  to  be  as  brave  as  wise.  God  and 
your  time  summon  you  also  to  the  potential  throngs  whose 
hair  is  unflecked  and  whose  blood  is  full  of  iron.  You  rep- 
resent no  school  of  doubt,  of  hesitation,  of  moral  pusillani- 
mity. Just,  sympathetic,  unconditional,  stand  with  lip  and 
life  to  resist  the  reign  of  greed  and  graft,  the  cunning  that 
plays  Jacob's  trick  upon  Esau,  and  the  rash  surrender  of  the 
birthright.  Let  all  that  assails  man-right  sting  you  to  testify 
and  to  act.  Let  no  good  cause  lack  you,  let  no  right  event 
fail  because  any  of  you  is  a  coward  absentee.  Down  to 
that  day  when  your  final  valedictorian  shall  speak  your  final 
word,  be  such  as  wear  their  swords  to  the  hilt,  such  soldiers 
of  democracy  and  of  godliness,  of  society  and  its  salvation, 
as  those  in  whom  and  by  whom  "  the  Lion  of  the  tribe  of 
Judah  shall  prevail  to  open  the  book  ! " 


Of 


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CORRECTIONS: 

Page  65,  30th  line,  spell  transcendent. 

Page  72,  10th  line,  speech. 

Page  102,  14th  line,  for  contract  read  construct. 


PRINTED    BY    THE    COURIER    PRESS 
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UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS-URBANA 


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